title: Not to Us

themes: discipleship kenosis christlikeness grace-not-merit christus-victor outward-appearance-vs-heart jealousy

text:
**Scripture:** Romans 14:7-8; Romans 7:15-19; Psalm 115:1; Matthew 20:1-16; Luke 15:11-32
**Series:** 2020

> Part of the 'The Way' series on discipleship, this sermon takes Romans 14:7-8 ('we are the Lord's') to argue that the goal of discipleship is becoming Christlike by emptying ourselves of everything that is 'not love.' Drawing on Moneyball's Billy Beane, the preacher shows that external markers of success are unnecessary; just as a ball comes the same speed regardless of looks, we don't need the false identities ('real man,' 'cool kid') culture imposes. Sanctifying grace works gradually (Paul in Romans 7), not by a snap of the fingers. Using sports metaphors, the vineyard workers, and the prodigal's older brother (Psalm 115's 'not to us but to your name be the glory'), Pruitt insists the pressure isn't on us to win life's game—Christ has already won the victory, grace is offered to all who come late, and God is still transforming lives even amid the pandemic.

**Illustrations:** moneyball-billy-beane, astros-world-series-game-7, wesley-emptied-himself-of-all-but-love, free-throw-game-on-the-line, bandwagon-fan, apprentice-becomes-the-trade, workers-in-the-vineyard, prodigal-son-older-brother

---

# Not to Us

### Romans 14:7-8
We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

Growing up, I was a big baseball fan. My father grew up in the Houston area and he was a fan of the Colt 45s and then the Houston Astros and he passed that on to me, as well. I was at Game 7 of the World Series last year where the Astros where the Astros lost. It is really hard for me to watch baseball since that game.
When I was in college, I got even deeper into baseball and especially into what is called Saber-metrics or advanced analytics. A lot of it came about through this one book called, Moneyball. Now, Moneyball turned into a movie in 2011 with Brad Pitt, but the book came out in 2003 and it is by this finance writer, Michael Lewis, and it really is as much a business book as it is a baseball book because it is about differentiation. How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors, especially if your budget can’t be as large as theirs. How do you compete if you are a small market team with the New York Yankees or the LA Dodgers? And so Lewis looks at the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, Billy Bean. And he starts with this story about Billy Beans life which is a great metaphor for the whole book. Billy Bean was a great baseball prospect coming out of high school. He was tall. He was strong. He could hit. He could throw. He could run. He the 5-tools that people used to talk about a lot more than they do today. He was also very handsome: he looked like a ballplayer. Scouting reports would even say: “Looks like a ballplayer.” Now, I am not that wonderful at baseball, but I don’t think you need handsomeness to hit the ball. It doesn’t really impact a game of baseball. It may impact other aspects of your life. But when a ball is coming towards you, a ball doesn’t slow down, take a look, and think, “that person is really attractive so I am going to let them hit me.” The ball comes the same speed regardless what you look like. And yet, baseball scouts so often were blinded by these external appearances and were not able to see what directly impacted games. What does it take to win a game?
Out of all of the analytics that came out of Moneyball, one I really appreciate is called WAR:  Wins Above Replacement. Which basically uses the idea of a replacement level player, an average player: Would you improve a team over an average player, or would you decrease the teams wins? How many extra wins would you give to a team? What does it really mean to win a game? Is it in your boxscore, your skill, your position, your coaching, what does it take to win a game? What does it take to succeed?
My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our sermon series on The Way, on what it means to follow Jesus Christ. The early Christians were not called Christians: they were called followers of The Way. What can it mean to follow Jesus? What does discipleship really look like? Discipleship, one of those words that often gets confused with discipline like disciplining your children, but also comes from a root like, apprenticeship, being a student. What can it mean to follow Jesus on the way?
Our Scripture comes from Romans 14:7-8: “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”
What is the goal of discipleship? What is the goal of faith? What is the goal of a baseball game. We can start there. A baseball game is quite clear about its goals. The goal is to score more runs than your opponent and get them out 27 times. Same thing with basketball, we have the basketball playoffs going on right now. You need to score more points than an opponent four times in 7 games. If you do, you will go on to the next round. And so what is going to help you to beat your opponent. The goals of different businesses are also clear. You can hone in on the goal: what are you trying to accomplish?
What is the goal of discipleship? What is the goal of Christian faith? Now there are a lot of ways to answer that question. All of those ways come back to Jesus Christ and the person and work of Jesus Christ. Who Jesus is? What Christ has done for us. What Christ offers to us.The life Christ opens up to us. We can think of the activity of God before we are aware of God, which in Methodist circles we call prevenient grace, the activity of God which justifies us and makes us right with God is called justifying grace. And the grace which makes us more holy, and this I want us to think of as the goal of discipleship. The goal of discipleship is being like Jesus Christ. It is similar to apprenticeship can look like. If you are an apprentice plumber, your goal is to become a plumber. If you are an apprentice woodworker, your goal is to be a woodworker. As a Christian, as a disciple, your goal is to be like Jesus. That is not possible. We are not the sons of God, but we are made in the image of God from creation. Our image of God has been restored through Christ’s sacrifice, through baptism, through the Holy Spirit in our lives. And we can become more Christlike. What that looks like practically is like this old Charles Wesley hymn.
He left his Father’s throne above.
So free, so infinite his grace.
He emptied himself of all but love.

So we think of ourselves, think about your life. Think about what you do, who you see, where you go. In our lives, in all of our lives, there are moments of love, moments that are grace-filled. There are also moments of not-love. Moments that we wish we could have back. Moments when we weren’t our best self. Moments when we weren’t acting Christ-like. So in this, if we understand the words of Charles Wesley describing Jesus, to empty yourself of all the not loves that are going on. And the great thing is: you don’t need them. You don’t need these not loves in your life.
It is kind of like Moneyball, thinking about Billy Bean. Billy Bean was a prospect who looked like a ballplayer. But in the end, he wasn’t one. He didn’t need to look like a ballplayer to succeed. He didn’t need many of those aspects that people were looking for to help his team win. It was unnecessary.
As a Christian, there are so many things in life that many of us have been raised to think or taught to make us think that ‘we need this. This is so important. This is what a real man does. This is what a real woman does. This is what a cool kid does. These identities we put on ourselves. Many of which are not based on love, not based on self-sacrifice and self-offering. And what discipleship points to is that we just need those not-loves in our life. We can empty ourselves of them. And it is really important, as well, to remember that discipleship is not a snap of the fingers. It is not just waking up one day and saying to yourself: Okay, I am going to stop sinning. And that is it. And we are done.
Early in Romans, Paul goes into it in Romans 7, saying, “I do the things I don’t want to do. And I don’t do the things I want to do.” That happened to Paul the Apostle who received this vision of Christ, of course it is going to happen to us, and yet God is still faithful. In discipleship, we learn how to empty ourselves. We pray for it so that we don’t think we need that not love in our life.
God offers us ways of seeing God in this world, of meeting God in this world. Tools to help us empty ourselves of all but love. That faith is not about our own effort or discovering ourself, but the Holy Spirit working with us, within us, and around us, to transform us to more Christlike people. This happens in community, like we spoke last week, that God calls us together to life together. It happens in our own lives, when we are willing to admit that we don’t live for ourselves but for Christ. And there is freedom in that. We don’t need to win the game called life. You don’t have to try to get the high score of life. You are done with that kind of living. You are free. You are loved. And you can offer this love to others.
It is like thinking about the end of a game. The game is on the line. All the pressure is on you. You are at the free-throw line. You have to get three shots and your team wins. And if you miss, your team loses. All that pressure is on you. That is not what God offers us. The pressure is not on you to win the game. Christ has already won the victory. It is amazing that to be a Christian means that we can be bandwagon fans. We can come in late. We can come in at the end of the fourth quarter, and we still are a part of the team. This is that parable of the workers and the vineyard. The first workers come at 9:00am and they are told that they will receive one denarii, and then workers come at noon, and then workers come at 3:00pm, and then workers come an hour before closing. And afterwards, they all get paid the same because the same payment from Christ is an immeasurable gift of life together with God.
And some may be grumbling, those workers how started early, those Christians who have been Christian all their life and have struggled to be faithful all their life, and they see people who had a life apart that was not very Christlike, a life that went wayward, a prodigal life, and they come back, and they also receive grace. Some of us may feel like the older brother to the prodigal son and think, “Hey, Dad, I never left. I never left. Why are you celebrating him?” And yet, God’s grace is sufficient. We don’t need that glory. As it says in Psalm 115, “Not to us but to your name be the glory, O Lord.” The older brother was thinking about his glory and not God’s name. When we are jealous of other people who live lives of sin before faith, we are looking at our own glory, we are desiring those things that are not love, and we need to empty ourselves of that. We don’t need that in our life. The life of God is not just somberness and avoidance of fun, it is a full life filled with Christ’s purpose, now and in the future. The kingdom of heaven is here. You don’t have to wait around to join in with what God is doing in our community today. God offers that to us this day.
It is happening, my brothers and sisters, it is happening at our church. Lives are being transformed in the midst of a pandemic. People are being baptized in the midst of a pandemic. God is still working. God hasn’t taken a break. God isn’t finding other things to do on Sunday morning. God is with us. And no matter what we have done. No matter what we haven’t done, God’s doors are offered and open to us. Our churches doors are open. You are loved. The way is offered to all. You don’t have to be the strongest. You don’t have to be the most beautiful or the most handsome. You don’t have to be the richest or the most well-connected, God’s life is offered to you. You don’t have to hit the winning shot, Christ has won the victory. You don’t have to look like a Christian, Christ has won the victory. You don’t have to look like a good parent. Christ has won the victory. You don’t have to look like a good student, Christ has won the victory. Grace is offered to you. Take a step. Empty yourself of a little not love this week. Drop one of those things that you just don’t need in your life this week. God will answer you as you pray. God’s grace is offered to you this day.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

#### September 13, 2020


site: sermons

title: Our Sacred Story

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: bee-creek-umc

themes: sacred-story stewardship wesleyan-grace consumerism

text:
**Scripture:** Jeremiah 1:4-10; Luke 18:18-27; Luke 19:1-10; 2 Corinthians 2:17; Matthew 6:21
**Series:** 2020

> Launching a stewardship series, the sermon defines a 'sacred story' (a phrase borrowed from French mystics) as the honest account of who we actually are, including how we spend and give our money. Using Jeremiah 1:4-10 read through the Wesleyan lens of prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace, it contrasts the Rich Young Ruler (who bracketed his comfort off from God) with Zacchaeus (who pledged in joyful response to being seen by Jesus). Against a consumer world that segments people to make them consume more, the church is called to be a people of sincerity who align faith, life, and generosity. It closes by previewing pledge cards, framing giving not as burden but as an opportunity to put our treasure where God is acting.

**Illustrations:** intermittent-fasting-unsellable, marketing-segment-bracket, rich-young-ruler, zacchaeus-wee-little-man, saint-francis-sells-all, peter-maurin-easier-to-be-good, apologetics-misconceptions, snowflake-one-thing, sales-close-peddler

---

# October 4

Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, “Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” Jeremiah 1:4-10

If you were going to share with someone who you are, what do you share with them? Do you share where you are from? Do you share about your family? Do you share what you do? I want you to take about a minute to think on this. All of you are beautiful, complex snowflakes. It is inherently reductive to describe yourself in one attribute. But let’s try it. What is the one thing?

But none of us are just one thing, right. What you thought of to share about yourself is different from all the ways you spend your time and your money. If someone looked at all the time you spent last year, would it describe who you claim to be?

A french mystic once said, “the story of all the moments that flow is our sacred story." The story of all the moments of life that God gives and transforms, all of them, from where we are to what we think and do, that is our sacred story. It is not a complicated endeavor. A sacred story is one that can be shared over a meal or a drink. It is not the lie we tell ourselves about how good we are. It is the honest description of what we think matters in this life. Who we actually are, not what others expect of us. It includes what we do, how we live. It includes how we spend our time, it also includes how we spend our money. It includes our generosity. Who are you?

My friends, over the next few weeks we are going to look at our sacred story, especially to see how we can better align how we live our lives with our sacred story. Our sacred story includes things most personal stories leave out, like how we spend our money, how we give our money, and how we support what we care about. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says that we are not peddlers of God's word, but people of sincerity. A peddler is not someone with sincerity, a peddler is trying to do whatever it takes to get the sale. Some of you have been in sales before, trying to get to the close. What does it take to get to the close. In the church, we are not trying to get to the close. We are seeking to be a place of transformation in all of the lives here and the lives outside those doors. Seeking transformation not through a certain set of skills or a path or beautiful words, but through the holy spirit present here. Seeking transformation in being a people of sincerity. People who align the story we tell about our faith, the story we tell about our lives, with what we do, with what we give.

And we can see this, too, by understanding the story that the world demands us tell. Where do you fit in a marketing bracket? Which segment are you a part of? That is the biggest question to most businesses in this world. Where do you fit in that? “How can we get you to consume a little more? How can we get you to spend?”

The world has an unquenchable thirst to segment us, divide us and to make us consume more, more, more. Do you know why intermittent fasting is not promoted more as a weight loss strategy on its on even given evidence? You can’t sell it. There are no fast bars you can sell. There is no fast juice mix. Cleanse is something you can brand and sell. Paleo is something you can brand and sell. Not consuming, that does not fit in to the world’s story.

So what is an example of a sacred story? In the prophet Jeremiah chapter 1, we see a straightforward one. Jeremiah doesn’t it into a marketing segment of interest. The under 10 share doesn’t buy a lot. Scholars break this section into four parts. There is a commissioning by God of Jeremiah. A rejection by Jeremiah of God. "And me?" There is a reassurance by God and then a sign of God's process. We can rest in any of these spaces, but as a student of the Wesleyan tradition, we can break Jeremiah's story into three parts: the first begins before he was even born, this is prevenient grace. God is present with him from before he existed. Then the moment of conversion. This is what Wesley calls justifying grace, it is the commission, the rejection, the assurance, and the sign. And finally we have the mission, the purpose, what Wesley calls sanctifying grace. He is loved, he is transformed, and he is sent. You were all loved. No matter where you are in your journey of faith, in your journey of discipleship, you are all loved. Some of you can point to a moment of conversion, a specific moment of grace. Some of you cannot, and that is okay. As well, you all have some sort of mission. How we understand that is different but that we all have a mission is incontrovertible.

So does our life match our story? Does our generosity match our story? Do we give as the people we claim to be or do we give as someone else?

In Luke 18, we have the example of the Rich Young Ruler. He is pious man. He comes to Jesus and says, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus tells him some commandments. Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. And the Rich Young Ruler says I have been doing these all my life, and then Jesus tells him to sell everything he has to give to the poor, and he walked away sad for he had many possessions.

He had many possessions. His sacred story did not include his generosity. The story the rich young ruler told about himself pointed specifically to what he did for himself not what he gave. But Jesus focuses on both. You cannot separate them. You cannot limit the way of God in our life to just the things we do or have that are comfortable with the way of the world.

I think that that is what is being pointed out here. The rich young ruler had honed following God down to what was comfortable with his standard of living. And Jesus presses him on this. So this takes places in Luke 18. What is amazing is that in the next chapter we have the story of Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus, some of you remember the song,
> “Zacchaeus was a wee little man
And a wee little man was he
He climbed up in a sycamore tree
For the Lord he wanted to see

> And when the Savior passed that way
He looked up in the tree
And said, 'Zacchaeus, you come down!
For I'm going to your house today!
For I'm going to your house today!'

The story of Zacchaeus is still super relevant. Zacchaeus is someone who was a sinner. Someone who has not been following the law. Someone who has been lying, who has been cheating, who has been stealing. But when he climbs that tree to see Jesus and Jesus sees him and tells him, “I am going to your house today,” Zacchaeus repents. Yes, repents, and then he makes a pledge.

These passages are not often read together even though they are super close in the Bible, but I think we need to hold them in tension. The Rich Young Ruler who follows the law to a point and stops and Zacchaeus, the sinner, who doesn’t bracket off spaces in his life for the work of grace. He doesn’t defend his comfort against the possibility of conversion. Often enough, even with this passage, Jesus’ command to the rich young ruler is seen as impossible. He says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. But then, he says, what is impossible for people is possible for God.

It is easy to dismiss the command of Jesus and to think that the God who put a word on Saint Francis to sell everything he had and give to the poor, that that God is different than our God today. But the call for us today may not be to sell everything. It could be, and we cannot bracket out the possibility of God calling us to radical transformations today, but the question for us today is our sacred story limited like the story of the Rich young Ruler? Or can we be a people of sincerity, who match our practice of generosity with our claims about God’s love and presence in our life.

Are there parts of life that we are keeping from God because we do not think that they can be filled with love or because we do not want them to be? Or are we able to share our story of generosity fully with God?

Now each of our sacred stories are different, but we are here together in this one sacred space, Bee Creek United Methodist Church. In a week or two we are going to go into the sacred story of this space, but I want to share today one of my own inspirations for what the church can be.

Peter Maurin was a French mystic and who said that he wanted to make it easier for people to be good; good in this broken world. This world that tells us that being good is not realistic, that you have to look out for yourselves, it is a dog eat dog world. Yet what is impossible for people is possible for God. I love this line, make it easier for people to be good, because it points to the structural realities we all face (little time, lack of energy, health, interest, etc.) and shows how guilting someone is not going to change them. Nagging or negging comes from a lack of trust. Humility, care, concern, walking with someone, tearing down barriers.

I think about this a lot with apologetics or sharing the faith with non-believers. I can’t make someone believe, but i can address any misconceptions they have. I think that this is one of the ways in which the church fits in. How can we make it easier for people to be good in this world? How can we provide spaces for grace. Spaces for worship, Spaces for mission, spaces for discipleship. They all fit together. And yet the church is also a space to allow generosity. To allow people to align their sacred story all the way from start to finish.

In a few weeks, we are going to be sending out stewardship letters and pledge cards to the members of the church. There is going to be an opportunity for a pledge. A pledge for those of you who are members of this church. A pledge of those of you who feel committed without being members.

In one way, a pledge helps figure out the budget for next year. And this is important. I believe in this church and what God is doing here. What God has done here since its planting and the great potential for lives to be transformed over the next few years. I think we are a place to help people be good by showing them Jesus and offering ways of Discipleship that draw people closer to God.

As well, though, I think about Zacchaeus when I think about a pledge. Zacchaeus pledges as a response to what God has done in his life. Jesus has seen him and notices him and forgives him. And out of that, comes a pledge. Part of the pledge is restitution for what he has done. Part of the pledge is joy for what he has received. Giving is an opportunity to align our sacred story fully so that we do not turn into that rich young ruler. So that we do not turn into poor young rulers who limit faith to only a portion of the abundance that God offers to us. Generosity is not a burden but an opportunity. The burden of the world is to imagine that what we do and have defines what we are. The light load of Jesus is defined by what we love, and we can love more freely by being a people of generosity. We are able to follow Jesus more freely by being a people of generosity.

Jesus says where your treasure is, there your heart will be. We all have an opportunity to put our treasure where God is acting this day.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

method: authored, not translated

license_apparatus: CC BY-NC 4.0


title: Sacred Story: Aligning Our Lives with Who We Claim to Be

themes: sacred-story stewardship generosity consumerism wesleyan-grace vocation-and-calling repentance-and-restitution

text:
**Scripture:** Jeremiah 1:4-10; Luke 18:18-23; Luke 19:1-10; 2 Corinthians 2:17; Matthew 6:21
**Series:** 2020

> Opening a stewardship series, Pruitt asks the congregation what their 'sacred story' is—the honest account of who they actually are, including how they spend their time and money. Drawing on Peter Maurin's line that all the flowing moments of life form our sacred story, he contrasts a life of sincerity (2 Corinthians) with the consumer world that segments us and pushes endless consumption. Jeremiah's call (Jeremiah 1) becomes a model sacred story, read through the Wesleyan grace sequence of prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace: loved, transformed, sent. He then juxtaposes the Rich Young Ruler (Luke 18), who bracketed off his possessions from God, with Zacchaeus (Luke 19), the sinner who pledged restitution and joy in response to grace. The aim is to invite the church to be a people of sincerity who let generosity align with their claims about God—framing the coming pledge cards not as burden but as an opportunity to put their treasure where God is acting.

**Illustrations:** peter-maurin-easier-to-be-good, intermittent-fasting-cant-be-sold, marketing-segment-brackets, rich-young-ruler, zacchaeus-wee-little-man, saint-francis-sell-everything, apologetics-misconceptions, sales-getting-to-the-close

---

# October 4

Jeremiah 1:4-10

If you were going to share with someone who you are, what do you share with them? Do you share where you are from? Do you share about your family? Do you share what you do? I want you to take about a minute to think on this. All of you are beautiful, complex snowflakes. It is inherently reductive to describe yourself in one attribute. But let’s try it. What is the one thing?

But none of us are just one thing, right. What you thought of to share about yourself is different from all the ways you spend your time and your money. If someone looked at all the time you spent last year, would it describe who you claim to be?

A french mystic once said, “the story of all the moments that flow is our sacred story." The story of all the moments of life that God gives and transforms, all of them, from where we are to what we think and do, that is our sacred story. It is not a complicated endeavor. A sacred story is one that can be shared over a meal or a drink. It is not the lie we tell ourselves about how good we are. It is the honest description of what we think matters in this life. Who we actually are, not what others expect of us. It includes what we do, how we live. It includes how we spend our time, it also includes how we spend our money. It includes our generosity. Who are you?

My friends, over the next few weeks we are going to look at our sacred story, especially to see how we can better align how we live our lives with our sacred story. Our sacred story includes things most personal stories leave out, like how we spend our money and how we support what we care about. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says that we are not peddlers of God's word, but people of sincerity. A peddler is not someone with sincerity, a peddler is trying to do whatever it takes to get the sale. Some of you have been in sales before, trying to get to the close. What does it take to get to the close. In the church, we are not trying to get to the close. We are seeking to be a place of transformation in all of the lives here and the lives outside those doors. Seeking transformation not through a certain set of skills or a path or beautiful words, but through the holy spirit present here. Seeking transformation in being a people of sincerity. People who align the story we tell about our faith, the story we tell about our lives, with what we do, with what we give.

And we can see this, too, by understanding the story that the world demands us tell. Where do you fit in a marketing bracket? Which segment are you a part of? That is the biggest question to most businesses in this world. Where do you fit in that? “How can we get you to consume a little more? How can we get you to spend?”

The world has an unquenchable thirst to segment us, divide us and to make us consume more, more, more. Do you know why intermittent fasting is not promoted more as a weight loss strategy on its on even given evidence? You can’t sell it. There are no fast bars you can sell. There is no fast juice mix. Cleanse is something you can brand and sell. Paleo is something you can brand and sell. Not consuming, that does not fit in to the world’s story.

So what is an example of a sacred story? In the prophet Jeremiah chapter 1, we see a straightforward one. Jeremiah doesn’t it into a marketing segment of interest. The under 10 share doesn’t buy a lot. Scholars break this section into four parts. There is a commissioning by God of Jeremiah. A rejection by Jeremiah of God. "And me?" There is a reassurance by God and then a sign of God's process. We can rest in any of these spaces, but as a student of the Wesleyan tradition, we can break Jeremiah's story into three parts: the first begins before he was even born, this is prevenient grace. God is present with him from before he existed. Then the moment of conversion. This is what Wesley calls justifying grace. And finally we have the mission, the purpose, what Wesley calls sanctifying grace. He is loved, he is transformed, and he is sent. You are all loved. No matter where you are in your journey of faith, in your journey of discipleship, you are all loved. Some of you can point to a moment of conversion, a specific moment of grace. Some of you cannot, and that is okay. As well, you all have some sort of mission. How we understand that is different but that we all have a mission is incontrovertible.

So does our life match our story? Does our generosity match our story? Do we give as the people we claim to be or do we give as someone else?

In Luke 18, we have the example of the Rich Young Ruler. He is pious man. He comes to Jesus and says, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus tells him some commandments. Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. And the Rich Young Ruler says I have been doing these all my life, and then Jesus tells him to sell everything he has to give to the poor, and he walked away sad for he had many possessions.

He had many possessions. His sacred story did not include his generosity. The story the rich young ruler told about himself pointed specifically to what he did for himself not what he gave. But Jesus focuses on both. You cannot separate them. You cannot limit the way of God in our life to just the things we do or have that are comfortable with the way of the world.

The rich young ruler had honed following God down to what was comfortable with his standard of living, not what was true. And Jesus presses him on this. So this takes places in Luke 18. What is amazing is that in the next chapter we have the story of Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus, some of you remember the song,
> “Zacchaeus was a wee little man
And a wee little man was he
He climbed up in a sycamore tree
For the Lord he wanted to see

> And when the Savior passed that way
He looked up in the tree
And said, 'Zacchaeus, you come down!
For I'm going to your house today!
For I'm going to your house today!'

Zacchaeus is someone who was a sinner. Someone who has not been following the law. Someone who has been lying, who has been cheating, who has been stealing. But when he climbs that tree to see Jesus and Jesus sees him and tells him, “I am going to your house today,” Zacchaeus repents. Yes, repents, and then he makes a pledge.

These passages are not often read together even though they are super close in the Bible: the Rich Young Ruler who follows the law to a point and stops and Zacchaeus, the sinner, who doesn’t bracket off spaces in his life for the work of grace. He doesn’t defend his comfort against the possibility of conversion. Often enough, even with this passage, Jesus’ command to the rich young ruler is seen as impossible.

It is easy to dismiss the command of Jesus and to think that the God who put a word on Saint Francis to sell everything he had and give to the poor, that that God is different than our God today. But the call for us today may not be to sell everything. It could be, and we cannot bracket out the possibility of God calling us to radical transformations today, but the question for us today is our sacred story limited like the story of the Rich young Ruler? Or can we be a people of sincerity, who match our practice of generosity with our claims about God’s love and presence in our life.

Are there parts of life that we are keeping from God because we do not think that they can be filled with love or because we do not want them to be?

Now each of our sacred stories are different, but we are here together in this one sacred space, Bee Creek United Methodist Church. In two weeks, we are going to go into the sacred story of this space, but I want to share today one of my own inspirations for what the church can be.

Peter Maurin was a French mystic and who said that he wanted to make it easier for people to be good; good in this broken world. This world that tells us that being good is not realistic, that you have to look out for yourselves, it is a dog eat dog world. Yet what is impossible for people is possible for God. I love this line, make it easier for people to be good, because it points to the structural realities we all face (little time, lack of energy, health, interest, etc.) and shows how guilting someone is not going to change them. Nagging comes from a lack of trust. Humility, care, concern, walking with someone, tearing down barriers.

I think about this a lot with apologetics or sharing the faith with non-believers. I can’t make someone believe, but i can address any misconceptions they have. I think that this is one of the ways in which the church fits in. How can we make it easier for people to be good in this world? How can we provide spaces for grace. Spaces for worship, Spaces for mission, spaces for discipleship. They all fit together. And yet the church is also a space to allow generosity. To allow people to align their sacred story all the way from start to finish.

In a few weeks, we are going to be sending out stewardship letters and pledge cards to the members of the church. In one way, a pledge helps figure out the budget for next year. And this is important. I believe in this church and what God is doing here. What God has done here since its planting and the great potential for lives to be transformed over the next few years. We are a place that helps people be good by showing them Jesus and offering ways of Discipleship that draw people closer to God.

As well, I think about Zacchaeus when I think about a pledge. Zacchaeus pledges as a response to what God has done in his life. Jesus has seen him and notices him and forgives him. And out of that, comes a pledge. Part of the pledge is restitution for what he has done. Part of the pledge is joy for what he has received. Giving is an opportunity to align our sacred story fully so that we do not turn into that rich young ruler. So that we do not turn into poor young rulers who limit faith to only a portion of the abundance that God offers to us. Generosity is not a burden but an opportunity. The burden of the world is to imagine that what we do and have defines who we are. The light load of Jesus is defined by what we love, and we can love more freely by being a people of generosity. We are able to follow Jesus more freely by being a people of generosity.

Jesus says where your treasure is, there your heart will be. We all have an opportunity to put our treasure where God is acting this day.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: Sacrifice

themes: mercy-not-sacrifice reconciliation atonement take-up-your-cross letting-go-of-control political-division

text:
**Scripture:** Hebrews 9:24-26; Leviticus 16:11-13; Leviticus 16:16-17; Matthew 5:23-24; Matthew 9:11-13; Hosea 6:6; Luke 9:23-25
**Series:** 2020

> Preached the Sunday after the 2020 election, this sermon on Hebrews 9:24-26 contrasts the modern metaphorical sense of 'sacrifice' (giving something up for success, kids, retirement) with biblical sacrifice as a specific response to God rooted in Yom Kippur and Leviticus 16. Christ's once-for-all death ends sacrifice, opens God's presence, and breaks the cycle of eye-for-an-eye violence. Drawing on Hosea 6:6 ('I desire mercy not sacrifice'), Matthew 5 and 9, and Luke 9, the pastor argues Jesus calls disciples to let go not of what matters but of what is meaningless, and to choose mercy and reconciliation over purity and being right. The closing application is pointed: be reconciled to those you've cut off over the election, don't sacrifice other children of God on the altar of purity, and dream bigger for God's new creation.'

**Illustrations:** double-bass-practice-houston, francois-rabbath, twoset-violin-lingling, bonhoeffer-come-and-die, elsa-let-it-go, election-estrangement-reconciliation

---

# November 8
## Sacrifice
Hebrews 9:24-26

Sacrifice is a word that is used a lot in our culture, usually with a metaphorical connotation. We don’t speak of sacrifice in the same way that they did in the ancient world. It is not temple sacrifices, doves and goats and blood, nor human sacrifices.

Sacrifice is usually used in the sense of giving something up. “I am going to sacrifice that, I am going to give that up.” I think about this a lot in my own world when thinking about music. Especially, thinking about what it meant as a kid, to practice. I played classical double bass in Junior High, High School, and and College….

In my last two years of high school, I was taking lessons at the University of Houston, so I drove the two hours from College Station to Houston pretty much every Saturday. I studied with a professor who studied with this amazing Lebanese Bassist, François Rabbath, who revolutionized Bass technique, and whom Gustavo accompanied at one point, which is such a cool connection.

Lessons at Houston, Cartoon.

There is a funny YouTube Channel called TwoSetViolin which has these two violinists from Australia and they make all sorts of music jokes, but one bit they have is the mythical LingLing, that their music teachers always brought up. “Why can’t you be like LingLing? Why are you only practicing 8 hours a day? LingLing practices 40 (4-0) hours a day!”

But giving something up is different from sacrifice.

My friends, today we are talking about sacrifice: what it means and what it doesn’t mean, and how we should live in light of Jesus Christ.

We must have in the back of our minds contemporary notions of sacrifice. Maybe for you it is sports or having kids or saving for retirement or saving to give to your kids, this notion of sacrifice is common and we must admit it and then admit that this is not what is going on in the Letter to the Hebrews.

Our reading today is brief but powerful.

Hebrews 9:24-26

Throughout the early part of Hebrews, there are continuous allusions to Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, one of the holiest days in the Jewish Calendar. During the first and second temple period (that is, from the time of Solomon up until 70 AD), Yom Kippur functioned similar to what is described in Leviticus 16

Leviticus 16:11-13, 16-17

This is how sacrifice is understood. It is not a giving up of things generally but a specific response to God. Jesus never asks his followers to make sacrifices. Jesus asks people to take up their cross and follow him. A cross is an instrument of execution not of sacrifice. Jesus tells people in Matthew to stop and not make a sacrifice if they are out of sync with a brother or sister.

Matthew 5:23-24

Reconciliation is more central to the economy of God than sacrifice. Even more, later in the same gospel, Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector, and some pharisees challenge him, saying: Matthew 9:11-13

Jesus quotes here Hosea 6:6: “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

At its heart, this is what we should understand Jesus’s life to do. Mercy not sacrifice. God doesn’t ask us to sacrifice but to let go of what is meaningless in our life. Faith is not about reaching personal goals of success. Those are great, but that is not why Jesus came.

What Hebrews shows us is that Christ’s death ends sacrifice and opens the presence of God to all of us. The violence that the world expected again and again, the violence of an eye for an eye, the violence of Cain and Abel, the violence of revenge and restitution and people getting what they deserve, that is over. Even though there is violence in this world, it will not win.

We can see on the cross the climax of what Jesus means when he says ’to turn the other cheek.’ I desire mercy not sacrifice. When someone confronts me, I don’t have to conquer them. My worth is not in my power but in God’s. Mercy not sacrifice.

Mercy does not mask over injustice or the sins of others. Mercy is not about forgetting. We can only understand mercy as a response to God’s mercy for us. We can only offer mercy to others out of a response to God’s mercy for us. You are forgiven. You are loved. What are you going to do now? I desire mercy not sacrifice. Or to put it another way, it is not your purity that is in question, how are you loving people?

This is also what Jesus is getting at when he tells people in Luke 9

Luke 9:23-25

Jesus doesn’t ask people to give up what matters to them but what doesn’t matter. “If you are going to be my disciple, you can’t be someone else’s disciple. You can’t do that anymore. You have to stop lying to yourself.

Or still, if you ever want to save your life, you are going to have to let go of the life you thought you had. Like Matthew the Tax Collector, like Zacchaeus, like Peter and Andrew, like Mary Magdalene. Like Saul of Tarsus.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, when Jesus calls a man he bids him come and die.

And yet, Christ made the sacrifice so that we don’t have to anymore. Jesus calls us to let die the things that deserve to die.

In the words of Elsa, “Let it go, let it go, can’t hold me back anymore.” Then again, don’t be like Elsa

Be reconciled. If you have someone in your life that you have avoided or blocked because of the election, be reconciled.

Reconciling doesn’t mean you have to like someone. Reconciling doesn’t mean everyone has to be your BFF. The goal of faith is not to buttress ourselves from the world nor is it to save the world from itself. Jesus paid it all and Jesus did it once for all.

“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose soul? “ God doesn’t ask you to give up something you need but to see the world in a different way, to see your needs in a different way, to see your relations with other people in a different way. Don’t leave people in your life behind. You don’t have to be the winner. You don’t have to be right.

God never asks us to give up on our dreams, God asks us to dream bigger. To dream not just for ourselves but for all things being made new in God’s new creation inaugurated by Jesus Christ. And the biggest dreams start with the smallest steps. Take a step towards God’s dream this day.

Before you think of the things you should do today, think of the people in your life. Don’t sacrifice other children of God on the altar of purity. We all need grace. We all need to respond to grace. We all need to shine our light and not keep it hidden. Jesus paid it all. Now let us give our all.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.


title: Saints and Sinners

themes: holiness sanctification grace-not-merit beatitudes comfort-in-grief communion-of-saints

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 5:3-12; John 11:35
**Series:** 2020

> An All Saints Day sermon on Matthew 5:3-12 arguing that sainthood is not superhero greatness but holiness, which anyone can receive by God's grace rather than earn by birth or effort. Drawing on the etymology of 'saint' (sanctus/holy), Wesleyan history (the Holy Club, the 22 Questions, the origin of 'Methodists,' Wesley's 1738 conviction of grace), and Rowan Williams' definition of blessedness as 'being where God would have you,' the sermon reframes the Beatitudes. It closes by remembering five departed church members with altar candles, teaching that memory is central to Christian faith: the God who moved in the saints before us moves in us now, and death is not the end.

**Illustrations:** superheroes-captain-america, moses-burning-bush-holy-ground, holy-of-holies-temple, wesley-holy-club-22-questions, methodists-name-galen-doctors, wesley-1738-grace, ceb-happy-beatitudes, rowan-williams-blessed, jesus-wept-lazarus, all-saints-candles-five-members, all-saints-charlemagne, grief-mortgage-metaphor, great-chain-of-believers

---

# November 1
## Saints and Sinners

	Matthew 5:3-12

Saint is a word with a lot of cultural baggage that I want us to let go of this morning. I want us all to take a deep breath, release it, and then I want us to talk about superheroes for a little bit.

Superheroes Avengers-X-Men

You and I cannot be in a comic book. There is this enormous gap of possibility between the X-men or the Avengers and us. If you or your kid said you wanted to be a doctor or engineer or even the President, there is path for that future. If you or your child said you wanted to be Captain America when you grow, sorry to break it to you, but that’s not happening.

Superheroes protect the innocent and fight the bad guys. They do what needs to be done but they don’t lose themselves in doing it. This is one of the most common plots in a superhero movie. How far will you go to protect the innocent? What are the lines you are willing to cross?

Okay, so we have the world of superheroes. Now, I want to get back to saints. Saint comes from the Latin word, sanctus, which means holy. Holiness is about being set apart for God. What is holy is different. When Moses encounters the burning bush and hears the voice that says, “Moses, take off your shoes, for the land you are standing on is holy ground.” In the Jerusalem temple, the central room is the Holy of the Holies. The place most set apart from the world where the High Priest only goes once a year.

Many of you grew up Catholic or Catholic adjacent. In the Catholic church, saint is an official category declared by the church. The Methodist church doesn’t have official saints. There is no canonization process. There are churches named after apostles called St. Lukes or St. Marks or St. John but there is no group that adds saints to a list.

But there is a lot of talk of holiness. Charles Wesley and some college friends started a Holy Club in Oxford in the 1720s and asked John to help them.

They came up with 22 questions to ask themselves daily. These are not easy questions. Here are a few. Actually, I want to read the whole list.

(22 Questions)

John and Charles and their friends were called Methodists as an insult. The Methodists was an ancient group of doctors that thought anybody could be a doctor. The followers of Galen thought only the best people from the best families could be doctors. John ended up embracing the name because he liked the idea that anyone can be holy. You are not born holy. You are made holy by the Holy Spirit. You are transformed. It doesn’t matter who you are, who your parents are, where you are from, what you do, you can be holy.

For Wesley, this opened up totally in 1738 when he became convicted about God’s grace. That it is not about what you do. You are loved fully and totally by God. And you can work with God to grow in holiness by doing the things of God.This is why there are methodists to begin with.

And so we come to the beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The beatitudes are often presented as this impossible ideal, kind of like waking up one day and turning into Captain America. It would be nice if it happened, but it isn’t going to happen.

Blessed or blessèd is a funny word, as well. ‘Bless your heart’ is not exactly a complement in the south. The word translated here as blessed is makarios, which can also be happy. The new, Common English Bible, translates the beatitudes in the following way and it can be quite jarring.

> “Happy are people who are hopeless, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs. “Happy are people who grieve, because they will be made glad. “Happy are people who are humble, because they will inherit the earth. “Happy are people who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, because they will be fed until they are full.

Happy are the hopeless? Happy are those who grieve? What? What is going on here?

Holiness and blessedness in God is not about super strength or genetic superiority. It is about God being with you and setting you apart. As Rowan Williams said, “To be ‘blessed’ is simply to be where God would have you be.” (116). And God may have you be in places that look strange to the world. God may have you interact with people that don’t look like super heroes and for sure do not look like saints. What are we to do?

We are celebrating All Saints Day today, which is a tradition going back 1200 years to the time of Charlemagne. Today, we remember those in our church who have passed away over the last year. That is what these candles on the altar represent. There are many others who we have lost this last year that you can name in your hearts. As well, grief does not work like a mortgage that you can pay off and never have to think of again. We grieve because we love. If we didn’t love, we wouldn’t grieve. Jesus grieves Lazarus minutes before he raises him from the dead. Even though Jesus knows he will see him soon, the shortest verse of the bible still says: Jesus wept.

We remember saints in our lives. We remember holy people in our lives this day because we would not be here this day without them. We would not know faith or God without others who showed us how to live. Or even if we are new to faith or young in our faith, the folks who showed us were shown by others who came before them. The great chain of believers stretches from the life of Jesus and the apostles over the centuries right here to this very room and it stretches to the future, it stretches beyond us to the lives that we will impact.

You are not going to be Captain America or Wonder Woman, but you can be holy. Not because you were born that way, but because God is so good that God can transform even me. God can transform even you.

It is good to remember rightly. Memory is central to the Christian faith. Through the great chain of believers, we remember Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Through the memory of God’s actions in the world, God uses this memory to act in us. By remembering those whom we love who have passed away, God reveals the actions of the Holy Spirit in their life. And then (and this is the important part) we remember that the same God that moved in them is moving in us. The candles on the altar represent five members of this church who have passed away over the past year: Bob Bowen, Bill Kiely, Elzie Williams, Susan Williams and Dick Littleton. In lighting them, we remember. We remind ourselves that God moves in peoples’ lives and death is not the end of us.

Take the time to remember this day. Take the time to remember fully. Take the time to let God enter that memory in a way that transforms you and transforms us all. As I said earlier, “To be ‘blessed’ is simply to be where God would have you be.” To be a saint is not to be a superhero. To be a saint is to accept the love of God and to let go of the things that keep us from love. This does not happen by your strength. This does not happen by skill, but by grace.
May you be blessed this day. May you be where God would have you. May you go where God will send you. May your remember how God has moved in the saints of your life. May you seek to show God’s love to others.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.


title: Start From Where You Are

themes: confession-of-sin honesty-with-god forgiveness grace you-are-worthy-already transformation

text:
**Scripture:** 1 John 1:8-10
**Series:** 2020

> A brief Evensong sermon on 1 John 1:8-10. Pruitt argues that we are loved and forgiven not for the polished selves we wish we were but for who we actually are, so we must start from where we are and confess honestly. Using a 'five things about you' slideshow, kids cheating to impress a teacher, and a golfer tempted to move a bad lie, he reframes God not as a prison warden waiting to catch us but as faithful and merciful. Because God is faithful, we have no reason to lie about our 'bad shot'; admitting where we are frees us to receive forgiveness and grow by grace into who we were created to be.

**Illustrations:** life-slideshow-five-things, cheating-on-quiz-for-teacher, golf-play-where-it-lies

---

# August 23

1 John 1:8-10

My life slideshow
Five things about you. Tempted to put things you don't like on their for people to like you.

Or older kids and quizzes, tempted to cheat to give your teacher a better impression.

You are loved and forgiven not for who you think you should be but who you are. Your teachers can't help if they don't know where you are. God can't help if you don't admit where you are.

We have to start from where we are and not from where we’re not.

Golf analogy.

Play where it lies or move it over. Nobody is watching

Is God watching? Is that the point?

God is faithful. God isn't a prison warden watching us, waiting for us to make a mistake. God is faithful. God is merciful. We have no reason to lie about that bad shot.

God offers us the freedom to receive forgiveness. We must confess where we are. Admit our lie is not that great sometimes, but we don't need to give up. Only then can we grow by grace into who we were created to be.￼


title: The Four Questions: Who Is Coming?

themes: advent-expectation john-the-baptist-as-forerunner readiness-watchfulness prevenient-grace mary-and-martha scarcity-vs-abundance second-coming

text:
**Scripture:** Mark 1:1-8; Luke 10:38-42; Isaiah 40:3-4; Isaiah 9:6
**Series:** 2020

> First sermon in an Advent series called 'The Four Questions,' modeled on the Passover Haggadah but asking 'Why is this season different?' Today's question is 'Who is coming?' Using Mark 1:1-8, the pastor casts John the Baptist as the warm-up act / cold open / paint prep-work for Jesus: preparation that hides itself in the finished product. The answer to who is coming is God-with-us, Emmanuel, the anointed one prophesied by Isaiah. The sermon then turns to how to prepare the soul, insisting we must first 'wake up' (the work of prevenient grace). Using Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42), it presents action and contemplation as two non-competing, both-necessary responses to Jesus, urging the congregation out of a scarcity mindset into God's abundance, including in generosity and giving. It closes by reassuring hearers they are already loved and forgiven and need only be ready: wake up, God is coming soon.

**Illustrations:** warm-up-act-headliner, cold-open-snl, passover-four-questions, painting-prep-work, christmas-decoration-boxes, barth-christians-wake-up

---

# November 29

## The Four Questions:	Who is coming

Mark 1:1-8

Most people don’t go to the show for the warm up act. Not that any of us are going to a ton of shows, but you go for the headliner. That’s the point. If people went for the warm up instead of the headliner, the warm up would be the headliner. No one goes to a talk for the introduction. The warm up, or the undercard at a fight, allows people to get to their seats, but it also gets their blood flowing. It wakes them up a little bit.

The cold open is tricky. This is what they call the first sketch on Saturday Night Live or the first segment of a radio show or podcast. It is easy to fall flat with a cold open, but you can never start with the climax of a story. You need to get there first. When something big is going to happen, no one is ready for it to just happen, you have to get ready. What does it mean to get ready for Christmas? What is Advent all about?

Before we get to advent and Christmas, I want us to spend a little time at Passover. Passover is the holiest season of the Jewish year. The passover table is where Jesus sat for the Last Supper and told his disciples to “Do this in remembrance of me.” In many languages, Easter is referred to as a word taken from Passover. In Spanish, it is Pascua, in French it is Pâques, in Greek it is Πάσχα. The Haggadah, or liturgy of passover seder, has many variations depending on where you are in the world, what tradition you practice, even down to individual family variations.

One of the sections of the Haggadah is called the Four Questions. In it, the youngest person able talk asks whoever is leading the Seder the same question four times: Why is this night different from other nights. In Hebrew, Mah nishtanah, ha-laylah ha-zeh,mi-kol ha-leylot.

Why is this night different? For advent this year, we are having a series entitled The Four Questions. They are different questions than the ones said at Passover, but they still go in the same general direction: Why is this season different?

Today, we begin the season of advent with our first question: Who is coming?

In some ways, we can see John the Baptist as a warm up act for Jesus. He comes to get us ready. In Mark, John “appears” and people start noticing him and start going to him. They are ready for him even if they don’t know why. People come out of the city and the countryside to go down to the river to pray.

Especially in the Gospel of Mark, John is the cold open for Jesus. He has a more important role, but I want us to understand him first in that way. John fulfills what is said in Isaiah, the voice crying in the wilderness that prepares the way of the Lord.

Another way that we can understand John is to think about painting a room or a house. When you paint a room, theoretically, you could just open a can and start painting, right? The first rookie mistake someone makes painting is to minimize the prep-work. Let me rephrase that, the first rookie mistake I made painting was to minimize prep-work. To properly prep a room you have to move all the furniture, put out drop-clothes, tape anything that is not painted or moveable, scrape old paint, and often put on a layer or two of primer. And yet, the best prep-job is always the one with the least evidence. Preparation hides itself in the finished product. The work of John the Baptist is covered by the life of Jesus but it is not lost.

Who is coming? That is the question for today and for everyday of advent. Who is coming? We must continually remind ourselves who is coming. John the Baptist is the messenger who ran ahead to let us know who is coming.

God is coming. Meshiach, the anointed one of the Lord, Emmanuel, God-with-Us.

Every valley shall be lifted up!

As the prophet Isaiah writes of him. “Wonderful, Counselor. The Mighty God. The Everlasting Father. The Prince of Peace.”

What greater guest than he could come to us?

And so, what are you waiting for in your life? What are you waiting for in your house? Are there paths in your life that need to be made straight? When you were getting your Christmas decorations out, did you find boxes of stuff that you don’t need anymore?

Many of us prepare our homes for Christmas. How are you preparing your soul?

The first thing we have to do is wake up. We usually don’t put that down on our to-do lists. Not just get up or get out of bed, but wake up. Waking up is necessary to do anything. In fact, A theologian once wrote: “Christians are the ones who wake up…Christians have indeed been lying asleep like others. What distinguishes them from others is that this now the past; that they have been awakened and are awake…they are not those who wake themselves, they are awakened by God.”

In order to prepare for what is to come you have to wake up. This is what John the Baptist did for the people. This is what the Holy Spirit does for us through prevenient grace. You have to wake up.

You have a part to play. You have to get ready.

The story of Mary and Martha shows us two ways of preparing for Jesus, both of which are necessary. Luke 10:38-42.

Mary and Martha are often presented as being in conflict with one another. We have Martha busy in the kitchen and Mary at the feet of Jesus. However, historically, the church never saw them in conflict with each other but as two possible responses to the coming of Jesus. The response of Martha is to do the things of God that are necessary. The response of Mary is contemplate, to pray, to think, to listen to God.

Without Martha, Mary couldn’t eat. She would waste away. Without Mary, Martha didn’t have a goal worth working towards. Jesus says that Mary has the greater share, but they does not exclude Martha or diminish her. Jesus does not have a zero-sum view of the world. When Jesus complements someone, it is not an insult to everyone else.

We have to get our heads outside of a scarcity mindset in order to prepare for the abundance of God. The abundance of God that is the good news of Jesus Christ. This goes with all of our lives. This goes with how we give and support the church. Giving is an opportunity to respond to God’s grace and to support what God is doing here. It is a claim about the truth and good news of Jesus Christ.

Good news is just that. It is news and it is good. Have you heard the news? Jesus is coming. Have you heard the news? What are you doing?

Let us follow the witness of both Mary and Martha. Let us get us our house in order. Let us get our soul in order. Let us not compare ourselves to our siblings or neighbors or anyone else who would make us feel less. Let us wake up! Emmanuel, God-with-us, is coming soon. He will make straight all paths. Every valley will be lifted up. Even the valley of the shadow of death.

We don’t have to be the cold open for Jesus. We don’t need to prep the crowd. We don’t need to be the undercard. God asks us instead to be ready. Advent is the time to get ready.

Remember who is coming. Remember that Jesus will be here soon. Remember that you don’t have to worry or be nervous. God is coming and you already loved. You are already forgiven. Wake up. You don’t have to live your past anymore. Wake up. You don’t have to go through the motions any more. Wake up. God will be here soon.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.


title: The Race

themes: scarcity-vs-abundance generosity servant-leadership discipleship magnificat-reversal antinomianism freedom-not-coercion

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 20:1-16; Matthew 20:17-28; Psalm 22:1; Psalm 69:1
**Series:** 2020

> Closing sermon in the 'The Way' discipleship series. Using the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16), Wilson contrasts the world's scarcity mindset, which sees life as a competitive race, with the radical abundance and unmerited generosity of God's grace. Through the extended metaphor of his Cleveland marathon and running pace-setters, he reframes the life of faith as running faithfully together rather than finishing first. He addresses the fear that grace breeds license (moral hazard / antinomianism), arguing God transforms our will toward love rather than coercing robots. Drawing on the rest of Matthew 20 (the sons of Zebedee and Jesus's call to servanthood), he urges humble service, comforts the struggling and doubting with the assurance that Christ is already present even in lament (Psalms 22 and 69), and invites a free step toward Jesus.

**Illustrations:** cleveland-marathon, beating-brother-in-law, running-pace-setters, moral-hazard-2008, forgiven-teenager-thought-experiment

---

# The Race
## Matthew 20:1-16
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

When I was in my twenties, I ran marathons. Two, for sure, but the great thing about running more than one is that it can be plural and I can say, “Oh, yeah, I’ve run marathons,” and people may think that it is anywhere between two and fifty, when it was exactly two. The first one I did okay, the second one, I finished (I don’t like talking about the second one). But the first one was fun. It was in Cleveland, Ohio. I had never been to Cleveland before. My sister’s family lived in Indianapolis and I was going to run it with my brother-in-law and we were trying to fins a location roughly between Durham, NC, where I was in graduate school, and Indianapolis, and so we ended up in Cleveland.
The nice thing about the Cleveland Marathon is that a lot of it is downhill. And so for people like me who trained for it but are not super athletically gifted, it was a really good first marathon. The other factor is that most of the people who ran it were running a half marathon. We get there the night before. We have a big carb load and are ready at the line and then we are off. It is fun. It is like a party. I didn’t realize that running a marathon, if you are not super serious, can be a fun socially. Everybody is doing the same thing. Everyone has a pace that they are aiming for and if you trained well, you can have a good conversation while running your pace. The point of the pace is to get you to the finish line. It is not trying to run the fastest that you can imagine.
My pace for that race was about half the world record time as it currently existence. I was cruising in my mind and it was fun. People had worked hard to get to this moment. And people on the side were cheering us on and it is a really powerful thing to be cheered on. And so, what happened at that race is that a little before the half way point all the half-marathon folks veered off to the finish line and the marathoners kept going. So the race thinned dramatically and it went from a party to a wasteland. I was not a super serious runner. I am not that athletically gifted. I am stubborn and that is why I was able to finish the marathons. I am stubborn in my training in that I had a training system that I found and that I wanted to follow and I did. But I am not super gifted in that way.
The really strong athletes in long distance running often run with pace-setters. A pace setter runs a period of the race (1 mile, 2 miles, etc.) with a person because it is a lot easier to run with someone than to just be in your head. And if you are trying to break a record or finish really strong, you have a number of pace-setters for different segments of the race or of training all working together to help you beat your time.
That race in Cleveland, I was trying to beat 4 hours. I did not beat 4 hours. But mostly, I was trying to beat my brother-in-law, which I succeeded in doing. That was enjoyable. That was my great athletic feat, even though he is about 15 year older than me, but he is actually athletic so I felt good about it.
Now when we talk about how this life is a race and getting ready for the race, sometimes it is so easy to sink into seeing the life of faith, the journey of life itself, as a competition between the people around us. This deep scarcity mindset that there is a finite set of resources and that we have to compete for that. There is a finite number of people who are going to be in the top of the race so we have to push and pull and strive and do whatever it takes to be in that place. And this is not what the kingdom of heaven looks like.
Instead of a scarcity mindset, what God offers is a life of abundunce, but that can be shocking in a lot of ways.
My brothers and sisters, we are finishing up our series on the Way, and what discipleship can look like. How the first disciples and Christians were not called Christians. They were called followers of the way. And we started this series talking about how we need to do this life of faith together. How where two or three are gathered, God is in the midst of them. Last week we talked about how the goal of discipleship is not to look like a Christian in any way society tells us but to look like Jesus, to strive to be like Jesus in all the we can, and that is what following Jesus looks like. Today, we are going to look at the race of life itself, the race of discipleship itself.
The reading for today comes from Matthew 20:1-16:
> “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

“So are you envious because I am generous?” These are some of the last words in the parable. And how the generosity of God can sometimes feel unfair from certain mindset. Generosity seems unfair from a scarcity mindset. From a mindset of limited resources and limited realities. There are limited things we can do. There are limited things that God can do. Generosity can seem unfair. Especially when we spend all of our life and all of our time comparing ourselves to others. When we see the race that life so often is as this competition between you and the people around you. Even a friendly competition between you and your brother-in-law pulls us away from the generosity of God that looks radically different. And we have to understand that grace offers a generosity that this world does not understand. A generosity that is not merited. Grace looks down on the center, looks down on those who don’t do what they say they are going to do, those who abuse what they have been given and the people around them, and grace offers an opportunity for transformation, or even transfiguration, as being something completely different, the conversion of the imagination. The fact that you are loved, that you are forgiven is a radical generosity that is hard to fit into the categories of this world.
The rest of chapter 20 in Matthew continues this notion: the last will be first and the first will be last, which is, again, so often antithetical to how we conceive of the world. SO often it is the case that we think that the first will be first. The first deserve it. They are there because they have earned it. They deserve, so we don’t want to take anything away from them. And if we give what is deserving to them to someone else, that is not really fair to anyone.
There is this concept in economics called moral hazard. There was a big of it around the 2008 financial crisis. The fear of moral hazard is that if the government steps in to support large banks it would teach the banks to be riskier in their investments and to self-regulate their risk because they know that no matter what happens, the government will step in and support them. In the history of the church, something similar to this has often been brought up, and it is called antinomianism. Antinomianism is the idea that if there is no law to follow, people will do whatever they want. Theoretically, you can see that happening. If you imagine a 15 or 16 year old child and you tell them that no matter what they do, you will forgive them, so they may do whatever they want. They may not, though, and I am not recommending this as a parenting strategy.  But you can imagine it as a thought experiment. if you tell people that they will be forgiven no matter they do, who knows what they are going to do? We can’t control their behavior.
Yet, in a lot of ways, what the message of Jesus offers to us is that God is not trying to turn us into robots. God is not trying to control our behavior as if we have no will, as if we have no agency of our own. Instead, what God offers us is to transform our will, transform our agency. So it is not that we are so afraid of the punishment but that we desire the God who is love. That we are not striving  to compete with the people around us, but we are striving for that transformation of love that Jesus offers to us, that transformation that many of us have seen with other people in our life. The life, in some ways, can be like a race, in that we have pace setters with us. We have people who walk or run with us. This is what is so essential about being a part of a church is that we have people who walk the walk with us, who hold us up, who say to us, “didn’t you say you wanted to be running an 8:45 mile, let’s do it together.”
As well, we have others whom we are pacesetters for. The story of faith does not end with us. We are not the ultimate expression of God’s love. We are part of the continuing sharing of God’s story with this world, of God’s love story to all of creation, that all of creation is going to be redeemed. You, I can be a pace setter for another in faith. There are people in your life who look up to you, who see you as an example. Your children see you as an example, your friends, your colleagues see you as an example. You can be an example. And sometimes that may feel like a burden. It is like, “Oh my gosh, people are watching me! What am I going to do?”
But instead, what Christ offers us is a radical freedom because in following Jesus, in pacing others and pacing ourselves we are not striving to be the first finishers of the race. We are striving to be faithful to the Lord of all creation who is already won the victory. And yet even the disciples themselves were sometimes caught in this trap of striving to be first.
Matthew 20 continues:
> While Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside by themselves, and said to them on the way, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised.”

So Jesus lays out the whole story. All of it is there. There will be some bad stuff that happens in Jerusalem and then he will be raised up. Okay, the very next verse.
>
> Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him.

So Jesus explains the passion right there for everybody. He is like, “Okay guys, stuff is about to get really really real real. People are going spit on me. I am going to be punished. I am going to be killed. But then I will be raised again, don’t worry. I have the power over death. God will defeat death. This is the context in which the mother of James and John come to him.

> And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” But Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?”

She missed the point. They missed the point. I probably think that they were asking their mom, “Mom, can you go ask Jesus the thing?” And egging her on about it, even though Jesus says what is going to happen. James and John then answer:

> They said to him, “We are able.” He said to them, “You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”

When the others hear about this, they are angry at the two. They think, “Hey, wait a minute, why are you all trying to sit at Jesus’s side?” Again, Jesus has set this all out for them clearly but the disciples are still striving to be the teachers pet. Still striving and they are missing out on the heart of what Christ is offering.

Jesus continues:

> “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you;

The kingdom is not like that. The kingdom of heaven is not about lording your authority over others.

> but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

The abundance and generosity of Christ offered in discipleship, in following the way, is not found in us individually earning the victory or getting the ribbon at the end of the race. The way it often looks, in an inverted way, like humbling ourselves to others, like serving others, like serving the people we like, serving the people we don’t like, offering ourselves in humility to people that we would rather not be around. Because, again, if we have this image of the race, if we have this image of the life of faith, we have our race, we have the pace-setters around us, but that is not all. The life of faith is not this materialist thing but the reality that the Holy Spirit is infused in all that we do and that Christ is present there and that in order to be a servant to all, the Holy Spirit has already been present with us. That you can do all things through Christ our Lord because God is with you. So you don’t need to be afraid of serving others. You don’t need to be afraid of how it is going to look. You don’t need to be afraid of finishing last.
And sometimes, finishing last can be a gift to others because then they don’t have to finish last. And you can handle finishing last because Christ is in you. You don’t need to finish first, because Christ is in you. You don’t need to beat your brother-in-law in a race because Christ is in you. And all it takes is seeking.
Christ offers us this comfort that even in those seasons of doubt and discouragement, even in those seasons of trauma and grief, that by seeking Christ, we have already found him. The desire to seek Jesus in this world can only emerge from the already present nature of Christ in our lives.
So if you are struggling, my brothers and sisters, if you are struggling in this season, if you have struggled in your life. If there have been moments of despair, moments of screaming out, “why, God, why?” You are not alone. Christ is already with you in that screaming out. That screaming out, like in Psalm 22, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” That screaming out, like in Psalm 69, “Save me, O Lord, for the waters have come up to my neck. I am drowning in my tears.” That Christ is already present in us. And the same brokenness around us that makes us despair and hurt is the brokenness that Christ came to earth to save, so that all of creation will be redeemed. The brokenness that is overcome by resurrection, by following the way.
We don’t need to strive to be first. Following the way of Jesus is striving to be faithful together. To do the things of God together. To have mercy for each other together, to have an idea of the generosity of grace. To not try and horde our grace, to not try and horde what God has given us, but to share it with others in our lives. To share it with the people we know, to share it with the people we don’t know, that is what discipleship comes down to along the way together. God has offered this path to you. Whether or not you became a Christian as a child or late in life or whether you don’t even know you believe at this point, you are welcome, you are loved, you are forgiven. The way is offered to you. It takes you taking a step, though. You have to take that step towards Jesus. God does not create robots. We are not robots with all of our decisions already preprogramed in us. We are created free in the image of God and out of freedom God desires a response from us.
So in this season, I pray that you are able to take a step in that direction, even if you are struggling, even if you are doubting, by the very articulation of that doubt your are taking a step towards God. By reaching out to God in an unfamiliar way, you are acknowledging that God is already present with you, that you are loved and that you are not alone.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.