Sacramental

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 and Luke 3:15-17, 21-22:

In 1736, John Wesley and his brother Charles came to the colony of Georgia, having been invited by James Oglethorpe, the founder of the colony, to preach to the English and native populations. When they arrived, they found things to be different than they had expected, and Charles returned to London after just a few months. But John decided to stay and began to fall in love with a member of his congregation by the name of Sophia Hopkey. Although most people expected them to get married, through a series of miscommunications, Sophy ended up marrying someone else, whom she had apparently also been seeing. As you might imagine, John was a little less than pleased, and when she showed up to church John took the opportunity to publicly rebuke her and then refused to serve her communion. This caused quite a stir, and her husband brought charges against Wesley for defamation. And then it gets even worse because not only was the judge of the colony known to be an ill-tempered despot, but he also happened to be Sophy’s uncle and allegedly bribed the grand jury to make sure that charges were brought. Wesley rightly reading the tea leaves decided to leave Georgia soon thereafter. And that story becomes important because later Wesley himself will also be denied communion, although then it will be because he was not considered to be a true Christian, which will impact Methodist theology on the sacraments.

We continue in our series on what Methodists believe. And while I said last week that we were only going to look at stuff that was unique to Methodism, rather than all our beliefs, that’s not really true for today, or not fully true, because there are some things that we believe as part of the sacraments that are broader than just Methodism. When it comes to the sacraments, we, along with most Protestant churches practice two, communion and baptism. That stands in contrast mainly against the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches which have seven sacraments. Protestants practice just two because during the protestant reformation Luther said he sought to follow only those sacraments in which Jesus participated and also commanded us to do. And while a lot more could be said about that, I’m not going to, so we can get into beliefs about baptism, which could be its own message as well.

In the Breaking of Bread

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 24:13-35:

In the Protestant tradition, we have two things which we consider to be sacraments, baptism and communion. This stands in contrast to the seven sacraments in the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox traditions. During the protestant reformation, the seven were narrowed down to two because these are both things that Jesus commanded that we do and also things in which Jesus also participated. And what we see in scripture is that the early church continued and participated in both of these things from the earliest days, and so in today’s scripture readings we find both of them, or at least a form of them, taking place. The first is Peter’s call to baptism in which 3000 people are baptized, which makes me think about the logistics of baptizing 3000 people in one day, and while we never are actually told that the disciples are ever baptized, we presume that they were, maybe by John the Baptist, or perhaps by Jesus, but this becomes an important and identifying aspect of the early church that obviously continues through to today. And then we have Jesus implement the practice of communion on his last night with the disciples, which we know from the writings of Paul continued to be a significant act in the early church, and we have at least a part of a communion meal in today’s passage from Luke.

Even though we are now several weeks past Easter, in today’s passage we find ourselves back on Easter morning, with two followers of Jesus who are traveling out to the town of Emmaus which is said to be some seven miles from Jerusalem, although some manuscript traditions say 19 miles, although where the town is, is unknown because there is no record of a town by that name, although there is much speculation of where it might have been. But, it’s entirely possible, and we’ll return to this idea, that we’re not supposed to know, that it’s supposed to be sort of any town, a generic town, one that is meant to represent our town, or a place where we can put ourselves in the role of making this journey. But regardless of where it is, on Easter morning, they have heard that Jesus’ body was not there, and that the women, or at the very least Mary, have encountered the risen Christ, but, like the other disciples, they don’t appear to believe it yet. They’ve heard it but have not processed it, have not accepted it, it has not taken root in their hearts and mind. And so, they set out going home and as they are making their way, they are discussing the events, although the Greek word used here could also be translated as arguing, when Jesus appears before them. Except, like in other versions of the resurrection story, they don’t know that it is Jesus.

Splish Splash

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The scripture was Luke 3:15-17, 21-22:

I know that most of you are too young to remember the game show To Tell the Truth, so let me give you a quick summary.  Each week, there would be three people all pretending to be the same person, although one of them was the actual person, and then the panel of four celebrities would ask each of the contestants a series of questions to try and determine who was the real person and who were pretenders, at the end of the show, the host would say “would the real Joe Schmoe please stand up.”  At the beginning of today’s passage we have a short version of To Tell the Truth taking place.  John the Baptist is out at the Jordan River making a unique, or somewhat unique, proclamation about God and calling for people to come and repent and be baptized, hence his name.  Some of the people are beginning to wonder if John might be the Messiah, or the Christ in Greek, when Jesus shows up on the scene, and suddenly people are saying will the real Messiah please stand up, except that rather than the host making that call, it is John himself, at least in Luke’s gospel, that makes the call.

The Baptism of Jesus, which we remember today, and always the first Sunday after Epiphany, represents the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in many ways, but is also unique amongst the gospel stories.  It is unique because it is one of the few stories that is actually found in all four gospels.  That puts it right up there with the passion story.  We like to think that all the gospels tell the same story, or stories, but they don’t.  They have their own unique perspective and their own unique stories that only occur in their gospels, or perhaps in another.  So for example, only two gospels give us birth stories, and they are nowhere close in telling us the same story, other than the rough outline that Mary and Joseph had  a baby named Jesus and it happened in Bethlehem.