Several years ago when I was appointed here, we did a sermon series based on a book by Bishop Reuben Job entitled Three Simple Rules. Bishop Job didn’t create those three rules, instead they came to us from John Wesley, the found of Methodism, and they were his general rules, the things we were supposed to do if we were to call ourselves Methodists, and those three things were to first do no harm, second to do good and third was to stay in love with God. Several years after Bishop Job wrote that book, he wrote another book entitled Three Simple Questions. These questions go to the heart of our faith even more than Wesley’s rules did, and those three simple questions are: Who is God?; Who am I?; and Who are We Together? Now those three questions might be a lot of things, but I don’t think they are very simple, and yet we have to answer them in order not only to proclaim a faith, to have a set of beliefs, but also, more importantly, to live our faith because how we answer those questions should impact our actions, although sometimes there is a disconnect between what we say we believe and how we actually live our lives out and the God that we worship in our lives.
I know they haven’t won in a while, but that’s because God has to give other fans a chance as well, right? But isn’t that what we hear all the time, that someone is winning, especially in sports, because God is favoring them, and so athletes point to God, or where they imagine God is, when they score, or do something great. So that must be who God is and how God works right? And anything that contradicts that must be wrong right? When Arian Foster of the Houston Texans says that he doesn’t believe that then it must mean that he’s an atheist right? But perhaps the players who say things actually believe in a different idea of God, but don’t live that reality. Who we imagine God to be is incredibly important to who and what we are. So who is God?
