Who Do You Think You Are? : No Doughnuts in Church

Good morning! If this is your first time with us here at Making Waves welcome, and if you are joining us again, welcome back. For any of you that haven’t been with us, we have been doing a series called Who Do You Think You Are? It’s a series that I have been doing at Pelham United Methodist Church all about those three little words after the word, “Pelham” in our title. What does it mean to be a United Methodist Church? What is it that separates us from our peers in Christianity? The first week we discussed what Grace was and what it symbolizes to us in Wesleyan tradition. Last week, we discussed who Jesus was in our lives and how He related to atonement. 

Yummy.

I'm sure many of you are curious as to why I have titled this message as having some relation to doughnuts... I promise all will become clear if you hang on with me until the end! This week we are going to turn to the Word for the next step in our spiritual lives: discipleship. If you’ll join me, I am going to be reading from the gospel of Matthew, starting in chapter 18 with verses 16 through 20. This is after the crucifixion, and is known as, “The Great Commission.”

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

-Matthew 28:16-20

Will you pray with me? Heavenly Father, we ask that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be glorifying in Your presence here today. For You are our Rock and Redeemer. Amen.

I will never forget my high school years. I can still remember being a freshman at Davie High School, coming from middle school and still fresh to the world of the “big kids.” It was only my second semester and I was beginning to realize the true rough-and-tumble nature of higher education and I considered myself to be slowly but surely becoming a true-blue, tough-as-nails high schooler. Or at least, that was how I felt until 4^th period of the first day of classes. I had registered for a course that was administered by a member of my church, so I thought I had an “A” in the bag. But nothing could have quite prepared me for the now late Ms. Tutterow’s Holocaust Studies course.

You see, Ms. Tutterow was more than just a book-and-pencil teacher, she was an experiential teacher who wanted us to truly understand what we were learning. She wanted us to have an appreciation for the many cultures of the Middle East. She had the students attend a catholic worship service, attend a service in a local synagogue, and attend a worship service in a mosque.

But she taught more than experiences, she also wanted us to learn about world geography. She had us learn the countries, deserts and seas of the area. I firmly remember having to learn these because I had to take this test in particular four or five times. I’ve never been very good a memorization. But, I did learn something much more important during this semester-long map test. For those of you who were hoping to learn a geography lesson from a completely inadequate teacher, you have come to the right place today. You see, there are two major bodies of water in the general vicinity of Israel: the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. These seas are absolutely fascinating, because they could not be any more opposite of one another.

The Sea of Galilee with some of the varying plant life.
Vibrant and thriving.

The Dead Sea, rich in salt, though rich in little else.

The Sea of Galilee is a beautiful thriving body of water. There is a plethora of wildlife, including over twenty different varieties of fish, some of which are unique to the Sea of Galilee alone. The plant life is thriving and the water is a vibrant color. Now, when it comes to the Dead Sea the story reverses itself. The Dead Sea is just that: dead. There is little to no plant and animal life. The water is dusty gray color and the salt level is 35% higher than the water of the ocean. In fact, you barely even have to attempt to stay afloat in the water; the salt alone makes you buoyant. What makes this amazing is that both of these bodies of water get their water from the exact same source: the Jordan River.

How can this be? How can both of these bodies of water have so drastically different environments? The answer is actually quite simply. The Sea of Galilee is higher in elevation that the average sea level, so it has many different outlets for the water that comes in to exit. Now, the Dead Sea is far below sea level and so it holds all of the water that it receives within itself. It has no outlet for the water it receives and so it receives far more minerals than are necessary and over satiates it.

Isn’t this how we can be from time to time? We can receive the precious water of life from God and hold it within ourselves, turning us into something ugly and gray. Instead, we are called to be like the Sea of Galilee and be full of outlets; to let the living water overflow and nourish those around us.

This is a perfect example of God’s calling for our lives in regards to discipleship. In the scripture that we read earlier, Jesus didn’t call us to sit in our couches and watch The Bachelor and let Him worry about the church. He may be with us always, but it still our calling to actively pursue others into a loving relationship with Christ through the church.

But there is a danger to those of us trying to spread the gospel in a way that lifts up Christ and encourages others to enter in to a relationship with Him. Care to take a guess at who it might be? Who might be trying so hard to keep us from bringing other to this most perfect relationship? ISIS? Money? Video Games? Wal-Mart? Those things may be scary and hindrances but one of the main things that divides the people from Christ is: the Church itself.

This past Wednesday we began a Bible Study called, “Jesus > Religion.” We read this poem by the author of the study that I feel perfectly sums up this division between Christ and His people: religion.

Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus

What if I told you, Jesus came to abolish religion?

What if I told you getting you to vote Republican, really wasn’t His mission?

Because Republican doesn’t automatically mean Christian,

And just because you call some people blind, doesn’t automatically give you vision.

If religion is so great, why has it started so many wars?

Why does it build huge churches, but fails to feed the poor?

Tells single moms God doesn’t love them if they’ve ever been divorced

Yet God in the Old Testament actually calls the religious people whores

Religion preaches grace, but another thing they practice,

Tend to ridicule Gods people, they did it to John the Baptist,

Cant fix their problems, so they try to mask it,

Not realizing that’s just like spraying perfume on a casket

Because the problem with religion is that it never gets to the core,

It’s just behavior modification, like a long list of chores.

Let’s dress up the outside, make things look nice and neat,

Its funny that’s what they do to mummies, while the corpse rots underneath,

Now I ain’t judging I’m just saying be careful of putting on a fake look,

Because there’s a problem if people only know that you’re a Christian 

By that little section on your Facebook

In every other aspect of life you know that logic's unworthy

It's like saying you play for the Lakers just because you bought a jersey

But see I played this game too; no one seemed to be on to me,

I was acting like church kid, while addicted to pornography.

I’d go to church on Sunday, but on Saturday getting faded,

Acting as if I was simply created to have sex and get wasted.

Spend my whole life putting on this façade of neatness,

But now that I know Jesus, I boast in my weakness.

If grace is water, then the church should be an ocean,

Cuz its not a museum for good people, it’s a hospital for the broken

I no longer have to hide my failures I don’t have to hide my sin,

Because my salvation doesn’t depend on me, it depends on him.

because when I was Gods enemy and certainly not a fan,

God looked down on me and said, “I want that man!

Which is so different from religious people, and why Jesus called em fools

Don’t you see hes so much better than just following some rules?

Now let me clarify, I love the church, I love the bible, and I believe in sin

But my question, is if Jesus were here today, would your church let Him in?

Remember He was called a drunkard and a glutton by  “religious men”

The Son of God not supported self-righteousness, not now, not then.

Now back to the topic, one thing I think is vital to mention,

How Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrums

One is the work of God one is a man made invention,

One is the cure and one is the infection.

Because Religion says do, Jesus says done.

Religion says slave, Jesus says son,

Religion puts you in shackles but Jesus sets you free.

Religion makes you blind, but Jesus lets you see.

This is what makes religion and Jesus two different clans,

Religion is man searching for God, but Christianity is God searching for man.

Which is why salvation is freely mine, forgiveness is my own,

Not based on my efforts, but Christ’s obedience alone.

Because he took the crown of thorns, and blood that dripped down his face

He took what we all deserved, that’s why we call it grace.

While being murdered he yelled “father forgive them, they know not what they do”,

Because when he was dangling on that cross, he was thinking of you

He paid for all your sin, and then buried it in the tomb,

Which is why I’m kneeling at the cross now saying come on there’s room

So know I hate religion, in fact I literally resent it,

Because when Jesus cried It is finished, I believe He meant it.

Jefferson Bethke, orator of the poem "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus."

I feel like this poem says it so perfectly: if Jesus were here today, would you let Him in? Sometimes we as a people get so caught up in the rules and the traditions that we forget that, at it’s true nature Christianity is really very simple: through the blood of Christ we are healed. 

I can still recall during my college years I sang with my chapel choir and there was one Sunday where the choir lead worship on a Sunday at the chapel. Many of my peers in the choir were simply taking the class as a throwaway college course and many of them were not Christian at all. I was so thrilled that they attended that Sunday. I had tried so hard to show my peers the love of the church. I had tried to invite them, but the church had hurt them when they were in their youth years. I wanted them to realize that the church could be a fun place to be, so in an attempt to make them more comfortable, I brought them doughnut holes from Dunkin’ Donuts. I had gotten so caught up in the excitement of my peers attending church and giving Jesus a chance that I had forgotten the cardinal rule of Christ himself: thou shalt consume no food in the sanctuary. Before any of them even had the chance to eat a single delicious treat, one of the leaders walked over to me, snatched the box from my hand and set the box in her office until after the service was over. I was embarrassed, not for my own pride, but for my pride in the church. How often do we get more obsessed over our own pragmatic rules that we make up in our head that we ruin a perfectly good opportunity to witness the incredible grace of Christ to some of our jaded millennials?

Don’t misunderstand… I’m not trying to raise some kind of anarchist movement within the church. I’m simply trying to remind us that, while rules may be important, there are other things that take priority. The founder of our denomination John Wesley spoke on this topic in great length. He called it a belief in practical divinity. He had this figure that helped illustrate how he believed we came to know God. He stated that in order to deepen our lives in Jesus we only needed to pursue four different resources: we can seek guidance through what we refer to in Methodism as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. There is one primary resource that we turn to before all else: scripture. Scripture is the primary resource that we hear from God through. I could go for hours talking about the Bible, but I think I’ll save that for another day, I’m sure that we all have Buzzfeed articles to read. After scripture feeds us our understanding, we can turn to three others: experience, reason, and tradition. Tradition meaning “How did we do this before to glorify and hear God?” Experience meaning “How has God spoken to us in the past?” and Reason meaning “What would logically be done to further God’s kingdom?” Wesley believed that pursuing God through these sources would lead to the clearest image of God.

Now, I want to re-iterate what I said earlier: I’m not here to overthrow the church democracy and begin my own wild anarchist movement. That’s hardly what I believe in. There are plenty of times, in fact, where I have fallen victim to the tempting taste of power and made rules of my own accord. The message that I’m getting after here is one of personal and communal discipleship. As we pursue God through our individual study and our group study, we need to ensure that we are in the right mindset to do so. We believe in practical divinity in both of these regards. Pragmatism has it’s place in the world, but Christianity is actually just so simple. Go back to week one of this series: it’s all about grace. That’s God’s mission in this broken, hurting world. So, I just encourage us to think before we say something. How is God’s grace shown through harassing Fox or CNN news when they say something we don’t like? How is God’s grace shown through a church picketing homosexual funerals? How is God’s grace shown through drawing lines in the sand at every turn and stop?

I would challenge us as we go throughout the next few weeks to pay extra attention to how we further God’s kingdom together. What decisions are we making without considering scripture, tradition, experience and reason? How quickly are we coming to God-centered decisions without asking if this clearly delivers the loving, grace-filled message of Christ?

Please feel free to post any comments for discussion, I will try my best to respond. As always, if you have any private needs or prayers concerns, feel free to contact me personally at nathan@makingwaves.cc.

Blessings!