Past Pain, Present Gifts

(formerly – Violence, Division, and Unexpected Gifts)

May 29, 2022*

By Pastor John Partridge

John 17:20-26 Acts 16:16-34 Revelation 22:12-17, 20-21

Mary Todd Lincoln was crazy. Okay, that’s not entirely true. Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of President Abraham Lincoln, was a sufferer of an undiagnosed mental illness and was extraordinarily difficult to live with. By making a long-distance examination from historically documented accounts, historians of today guess that Mary Todd Lincoln may well have suffered from bipolar disorder and, in an era far removed from a diagnosis, let alone a treatment of any kind, her disorder often made life in her household unpleasant.

Other husbands of that era might have, and sometimes did, have their wives and family members with such a disorder committed to an insane asylum. Many of them clearly were not insane by our modern standards but were simply so difficult to live with that they were removed to the care of someone else. Abraham Lincoln didn’t do that. He loved his wife Mary, he cared for her, and he found it within himself to withstand her rages, outbursts, depression, and other manifestations of her disorder.

Our nation benefited from his suffering. Historians speculate that the mental fortitude of Abraham Lincoln, forged and strengthened through years of caring for Mary, and enduring the suffering that went with it, made him singularly qualified to stand against the stress, arguments, negotiations, and other mental and emotional difficulties that were thrust upon him during the American Civil War. Anyone who had not lived through what he had already endured, might not have been able to cope with the demands of the presidency in that era.

In an odd sort of way, his suffering was a gift.

But what does any of that have to do with us? Well, before we get to that part, let’s begin at the beginning and remember when Jesus explains what the purpose of life will be for his disciples and all who would choose to follow him. We hear that story in John 17:20-26 as Jesus prays…

²⁰“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, ²¹that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me, and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— ²³I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

²⁴“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

²⁵“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. ²⁶I have made youknown to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

In this short prayer, there are a few things that I want to highlight. First, Jesus asks that our relationship with God be the same as his, that just as God is in Jesus, we might also be in them. More specifically, Jesus says that he passed the glory of God that had inhabited him, on to his followers so that we might be one, in the same way that Jesus and God are one. And because of the glory of God that dwells within us, and because of our unity of purpose and togetherness, that the world would know that God loves us.

Second, Jesus asks that his followers would be able to come to where he is, and to see his glory. And third, that Jesus’ purpose in revealing God to us, was so that we might be filled with the love of God. And we can see that this last one, combined with Jesus’ command to go into all the world and preach the good news, tells us that God’s goal is not to rule the world, but to fill the world with his love.

But how do we do that? How do we reveal God’s glory and God’s love to the world around us? Certainly, there are more ways to do that than we can count, but one particularly dramatic way is found in one of Paul’s missionary journeys recorded in Acts 16:16-34 where we hear this:

¹⁶Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. ¹⁷She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” ¹⁸She kept this up for many days. Finally, Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment, the spirit left her.

¹⁹When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. ²⁰They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar ²¹by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”

²²The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. ²³After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. ²⁴When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

²⁵About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. ²⁶Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. ²⁷The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. ²⁸But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”

²⁹The jailer called for lights, rushed in, and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. ³⁰He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

³¹They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” ³²Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. ³³At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized. ³⁴The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household.

I cannot even begin to count how many sermons can be, and have been, written about this passage. But for today, I want to look at two specific things. First, that this earthquake was extraordinarily specific. It was strong enough to wake everyone up and to shake the foundations of the prison, but where earthquakes ordinarily collapse buildings and jam doors shut, this one unlocks and opens doors, opens padlocks, loosens chains, and releases feet bound in iron stocks. That is particularly specific and not at all the way that earthquakes and other natural disasters usually work, and this is how we see God in the story.

Second, when the jailer discovers that this has happened, he draws his sword to kill himself rather than be tortured to death, which was what usually happened to anyone who allowed a Roman prisoner to escape. But Paul hears the sword come out of its sheath, knows what the jailer intends to do and calls to him that everyone is still there. Once again, this must be an act of God. Even if Paul and Silas convinced the other prisoners not to escape, the chances of no one leaving are so slim that this is also evidence of God’s hand because they were all there.

And the jailer comes to faith in God because he saw, with his own eyes the hand of God at work in the world on behalf of Paul and Silas. He witnessed that the doors were unlocked, the chains loosened, and the iron shackles unbound, and he witnessed the power that kept a jail full of prisoners from escaping when the doors stood wide open. And he experienced the simple act of human kindness that Paul showed to him. All that Paul had to do to escape was to leave. All that Paul had to do to get revenge for the beating that was inflicted upon him was to remain silent. But Paul did not remain silent. He did not try to escape or to pursue revenge. Instead, Paul showed kindness to the jailer.

And he, and his entire household, were saved.

And we connect the dots by remembering the words of Jesus that we find in John’s Revelation contained in chapter 22:12-17, 20-21. Jesus said:

¹²“Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. ¹³I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

¹⁴“Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.

¹⁵Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

¹⁶“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give youthis testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.”

¹⁷The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes, take the free gift of the water of life.

²⁰He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

²¹The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.

The important idea here are that there will be a judgement but that anyone can come into the kingdom of God. Everyone is invited and sharing the gift of eternal life is a gift that each of us can give to all the people that we care about.

God’s goal is to share the message of the gospel throughout the entire world so that the world is filled with God’s love. Paul brought that jailer and his family into the kingdom of God simply through an act of kindness when anyone would have understood his desire for revenge. And sometimes, suffering and pain are the doorway through which we must pass in order to receive an unexpected gift.

Abraham Lincoln’s struggles made him strong enough to bless a nation.

Paul and Silas’ suffering allowed them to rescue the jailer and his entire family.

What can you do this week, to point others toward the kingdom of God?

How might the pain of your past bless others in the present, or in the future?

How many of the people around you might you give the gift of God’s love?

And how many of those people are separated from eternal life by one… simple… act of kindness?

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.com . All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Live. If. Unless. Always.

August 15, 2021August 16, 2021 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, blessing, Broadway, Christ, Christian, church, contract, David, faith, followers of Jesus, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John, John Partridge, life, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, Solomon, Street, United, United Methodist

Video of this service can be found here: https://youtu.be/4fI64mGGvAY

Live. If. Unless. Always.

August 15, 2021*

By Pastor John Partridge

1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14 John 6:51-58 Ephesians 5:15-20

You should always be sure to read the fine print.

You know what I mean. Department stores do it all the time. You get an ad in the mail that says there is 75 percent off “everything” but in the tiny print at the very bottom, it says that the sale doesn’t apply to clothing, toys, housewares, and just about everything else in the store. I read one of those once and I was hard pressed to think of anything that wasn’t excluded in the fine print.

You see commercials on television selling amazing new drugs that say that they can cure all sorts of things, but in the fine print warn you about side effects that sound a lot worse than the thing you want a cure for. Military recruiters promise that they’ll put you into a particular school, or job, but we all know that the fine print in your contract basically says, “we promise to give this to you… unless we can’t, and then we can do anything we please.”

So common is this experience with fine print, that we often have our own lawyers look over important contracts so that we can discover and understand what has been hidden in the fine print. And so many of us have seen it, or been burned by it, that we all understand what it means when people describe the fine print by saying, “The devil is in the details.”

But if we read carefully, the strange thing is that sometimes God is in the details too. Sometimes God makes us promises that come with some fine print, and it is important for us to read and understand exactly what God is, and is not, promising. We begin this morning as David dies and is buried with his ancestors, and as his son Solomon takes his place on the throne of Israel. And, at that moment, Solomon receives one of history’s greatest and well-known blessings. But if we pay close attention, that blessing came with some fine print. (1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14)

^2:10Then David rested with his ancestors and was buried in the City of David. ¹¹He had reigned forty years over Israel—seven years in Hebron and thirty-three in Jerusalem. ¹²So Solomon sat on the throne of his father David, and his rule was firmly established.

^3:3Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.

⁴The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most important high place, and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. ⁵At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”

⁶Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.

⁷“Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. ⁸Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. ⁹So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

¹⁰The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. ¹¹So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, ¹²I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. ¹³Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. ¹⁴And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.” ¹⁵Then Solomon awoke—and he realized it had been a dream.

This exchange between Solomon and God is well-known even among people with no religious background. God tells Solomon to ask for whatever he wants, and rather than asking for money, power, or a long life, Solomon asks instead for a discerning heart so that he would be able to rule well. God is so pleased with Solomon’s request, that he chooses to not only give him the thing for which he asked, but also all those things for which he did not ask. God promises to give Solomon wisdom, but also wealth, honor, and a long life.

And right there is the fine print.

God promises to give Solomon wealth and power no matter what, but his promise of a long life comes with fine print. God says that he will give Solomon a long life… IF he obeys God and keeps his decrees and commandments as well as his father David had. Of course, we know that David wasn’t perfect, so God isn’t requiring Solomon to be perfect, but God has an exclusion clause. If Solomon doesn’t keep his part of the deal, God can end his contract and find another king that will.

And if you are tempted to think that this is a unique case, we discover that Jesus does the same thing in John 6:51-58 when he says:

⁵¹I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

⁵²Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

⁵³Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. ⁵⁵For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. ⁵⁶Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. ⁵⁸This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

Jesus says, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” And then, a little bit later he says, “the one who feeds on me will live, because of me” and, “whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” This is exclusionary, small print, language. Jesus doesn’t say that because he came to earth, everyone will live forever. Jesus doesn’t say that anyone who has communion once, or who comes to church once, or who comes to church for a while and then quits, or who choose to follow him for a while and then quits, all get to live forever. Jesus says, “the one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.” The implication of this language is that eating and drinking the flesh of the Son of Man is an ongoing, continuous action and not something that we do once and then coast. This is almost exactly like God’s wording in his promise to Solomon when he said, “if you walk in obedience.” These are a future tense that implies a continuous action and not something that is accomplished once and completed.

Paul emphasizes this in his letter to the church in Ephesus when he says in Ephesians 5:15-20:

¹⁵Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, ¹⁶making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. ¹⁷Therefore do not be foolish but understand what the Lord’s will is. ¹⁸Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, ¹⁹speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, ²⁰always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul says, don’t be foolish. Don’t just get drunk to dull the pain and then allow yourself to get drawn into sin. Instead, fill yourself, and your time, with spiritual things so that you will… always give thanks to God… for everything. Paul echoes what we heard from the stories of Solomon and Jesus and emphasizes that following Jesus isn’t something that we do once, or for a little while, and then coast. Following Jesus, being filled by the Spirit, caring for one another, worshiping together, and giving thanks to God are things that we are to do continuously or, as Paul said, “always.”

They say that the devil is in the details, but so is God.

From Solomon, we learned that we must not just be obedient, but that we must keep on being obedient and continuously keep God’s decrees and commands throughout our lives.

From Jesus, we learned that we must continue to share in the Lord’s supper, to continue to feed on the word of God and remain in love with Jesus.

And from Paul, we learned that we must always fill our time, and our souls, with spiritual things, and always give thanks to God.

Following Jesus has never been “one and done.” We cannot claim Jesus once, or follow Jesus once, or go to church once, and say that we’re done. Even the verb “to follow” is a continuous tense. It is a thing that we begin to do, and never stop.

Because, when we read the fine print, we understand that what Jesus said was, if you do this… continuously, you will… truly…

…live.

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.wordpress.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Wealth, Power, and Equality

June 26, 2021June 30, 2021 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, blessing, blessings, Broadway, Christ, church, Corinth, Corinthians, equality, faith, gifts, giving, healing, Jesus, John, love, Methodist, money, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, poor, power, rich, share, sharing, Street, United, wealth

Power, Wealth, and Equality

June 27, 2021*

By Pastor John Partridge

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27 Mark 5:21-43 2 Corinthians 8:7-15

I have two words for us to consider today.

Wealth… and Power.

Those two words bring with them a whole host of emotions, ideas, thoughts, and baggage of all sorts. There are elements of our culture and our politics that divisively try to convince us that we should hate people who are rich, which others try to convince us to hate the poor. We are told that the problems of the poor are caused because the poor are lazy. But any of us who know poor people, or who have been poor people, certainly know different. Most poor people work hard.

We are told that the rich are lazy and make all their money on the backs of the poor. But the truth is quite different. Only 21 percent of millionaires received an inheritance of any kind, only 3 percent of millionaires inherited a million dollars, and 84 percent of millionaires inherited less than $100,000. Some time ago, I heard that the number one vehicle driven by millionaires wasn’t some fancy sports car but was instead the Ford F-150 pickup truck. What does that mean? It means that almost every millionaire that you might ever meet, worked for a living, made their money for themselves, and probably still works, and sweats, for a living.

But that really isn’t my point. My point is that hating the poor, or envying the rich, isn’t what Jesus has called us to do. Wealth isn’t a sin, and poverty isn’t a curse. Likewise, political power, or the lack of it, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The part where we get in trouble, is when we begin to use our wealth and power in the wrong ways. Scripture is filled with stories about money and power, and this morning we’re going to read two or three examples and look at some of God’s instruction on how we are supposed to use what we have for the good of everyone, and for the good of God’s kingdom.

We begin this morning in 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27, where we hear of the end of King Saul’s life, David’s grief, and learn a thing or two about integrity, honor, and being a godly example.

^1:1 After the death of Saul, David returned from striking down the Amalekites and stayed in Ziklag two days.

¹⁷David took up this lament concerning Saul and his son Jonathan, ¹⁸and he ordered that the people of Judah be taught this lament of the bow (it is written in the Book of Jashar):

¹⁹“A gazelle[an ancient symbol for a dignitary or important person] lies slain on your heights, Israel.
How the mighty have fallen!

²⁰“Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon,
lest the daughters of the Philistines be glad, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised rejoice.

²¹“Mountains of Gilboa, may you have neither dew nor rain, may no showers fall on your terraced fields. For there, the shield of the mighty was despised, the shield of Saul—no longer rubbed with oil.

²²“From the blood of the slain, from the flesh of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan did not turn back,
the sword of Saul did not return unsatisfied.
²³Saul and Jonathan— in life they were loved and admired, and in death they were not parted.
They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.

²⁴“Daughters of Israel, weep for Saul, who clothed you in scarlet and finery,
who adorned your garments with ornaments of gold.

²⁵“How the mighty have fallen in battle! Jonathan lies slain on your heights.
²⁶I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me.
Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.

²⁷“How the mighty have fallen! The weapons of war have perished!”

David grieves for the loss of Saul and his son Jonathan and not just because Jonathan was David’s best friend. David writes a song, or story of lament and ordered that it be taught to the entire nation. David declares Saul and Jonathan to the national heroes and pours out honor on their memories, despite the years that Saul had pursued and hunted David. Saul had often sent the entire army out into the wilderness so that he could find David and kill him.

But even when David was alone in a dark cave with Saul and had the opportunity to kill him, David refused and gave Saul honor instead. Even though David had already been anointed as king by God’s prophet, David refused to bring dishonor upon himself, or upon Saul and his family, by taking God’s judgement into his own hands. And in this story, we see that even though Saul was dead, and even though David would soon be given Saul’s throne and become the king of Judah and a united nation of Israel, David still chooses the path of honor, integrity, and godliness.

And today’s passage in Mark 5:21-43 gives us several more examples in the actions of Jesus and the people in search of miracles.

²¹When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. ²²Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. ²³He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” ²⁴So Jesus went with him.

A large crowd followed and pressed around him. ²⁵And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. ²⁶She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. ²⁷When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, ²⁸because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” ²⁹Immediately her bleeding stopped, and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

³⁰At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

³¹“You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’”

³²But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. ³³Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came, and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. ³⁴He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

³⁵While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?”

³⁶Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”

³⁷He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James, and John the brother of James. ³⁸When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. ³⁹He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” ⁴⁰But they laughed at him.

After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother, and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. ⁴¹He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). ⁴²Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. ⁴³He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this and told them to give her something to eat.

There are several people here that are worth mentioning. The first that we encounter is the woman who suffered from a bleeding disorder. Whatever it was had caused her great suffering for more than a decade. She had gone from one doctor to another, one witch doctor to another, each one tried their own medical experiment, and each one was happy to take more of her money, until she was poor but still suffering. In desperation, she sets out to find Jesus, thinking perhaps that Jesus was such a great healer, such a great man of God, that if she could just touch him, she would be healed. And that is exactly what happened. She reaches through the crush of the crowd to touch Jesus’ shirt. Some translations say it was only the “hem” of his garment and some have said that the Greek word that is used here is more accurately translated into English not as “hem” but as “fringe,” the dangly threads that would hand from a Jewish man’s clothing. And she is healed.

The woman touches the barest edge of Jesus’ clothing… and is healed.

But Jesus feels it. Jesus feels the power of God flow through him and into… somebody. And once Jesus meets the woman, he declares that it was her great faith that has healed her, and he releases her to go in peace and freedom from her suffering.

But while Jesus was stopped, the child he had been asked to heal had died. But when Jesus is told that she is dead, he goes there anyway. But it is important to consider the girl’s father. We are told that he was a synagogue leader. From our reading, we know that the synagogue leaders were typically skeptical of Jesus’ power, but Jairus has nowhere else to turn. His daughter is at death’s door, and he is willing to sacrifice his reputation, his position, and his power to save her. Similarly, Jesus had every reason to say no to one more religious leader after so many of them had tried to trap him, humiliate him, and worse. But Jesus honors the man, follows him home, and brings his daughter back from the dead.

But why?

Why did Jesus act this way? And why does it matter?

And in answer, we turn to Paul’s letter of 2 Corinthians 8:7-15 where he explains this way:

⁷But since you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness, and in the love we have kindled in you—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.

⁸I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. ⁹For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

¹⁰And here is my judgment about what is best for you in this matter. Last year you were the first not only to give but also to have the desire to do so. ¹¹Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. ¹²For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have.

¹³Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. ¹⁴At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, ¹⁵as it is written: “The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.”

Paul says that Jesus became poor for us, that through Jesus’ poverty, we have become rich. Jesus was powerful, but through grace, chose to share that power with the people around him, and with us. Jesus shared his power to bring healing to the woman who suffered even though she was poor, and Jesus shared his power to bring life to Jairus’ daughter even though he had every right to be suspicious of Jairus’ intensions. Jesus had power, and by his actions, showed us that the proper use of power is to share it to help the people around us.

Paul said that if we excel, in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in earnestness, in passion, or in love, then we must also excel in giving. Whatever God has chosen to bless us with, we are called to share that wealth with others just as Jesus did. Our assignment, therefore, is to carry on the work of Jesus, to continue the mission that he began, to seek and to save the lost children of God’s kingdom. Whomever has much is to share with those who have little. Sometimes we may be on the giving end, and sometimes we may be on the receiving end. The goal, Paul says, is equality such that no one has too much, and no one has too little.

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You can find the video of this worship service here: https://youtu.be/puOgtxjA8SA

*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.wordpress.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

A Life Out of Focus

June 11, 2021June 11, 2021 PastorPartridge Sermon answer, blessed, blessing, Broadway, cage, Christ, church, curse, cursed, Eli, faith, focus, hamster, John, Methodist, Ohio, out of focus, Partridge, perspective, prayer, Samuel, shortsighted, sight, StreetAlliance, unfocused, United, vision

A Life Out of Focus

June 13, 2021*

(Trinity Sunday)

By Pastor John Partridge

1 Samuel 8:4-20, 11:14-15 Mark 3:20-35 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

Are you acting like a hamster in a cage?

Quite a few years ago, I heard a story on the radio in which the storyteller which, if my memory is good (and that is often doubtful), was James Dobson from Focus on the Family. But the story that he told was about a pet hamster that they had in the living room, in a cage, on the coffee table. And for hours, that hamster, who was aware of his captivity, worked tirelessly to escape. The hamster knew that the cage door that opened at feeding time held the possibility of his escape and continually pawed, poked, pried, and prodded at that cage door in hopes of finding a way to freedom.

But the storyteller saw something that the hamster didn’t. On the floor, beside the sofa, not far from the hamster cage, lay the family cat. The eyes of that cat were locked on that hamster and never left. If the hamster had been able to find a weakness in his cage or manage to squeeze through a gap in the door, his freedom would have been cut surprisingly and shockingly short. That cage, which from the hamster’s perspective was a prison was, from a wider perspective, the only thing that stood between him and a quick death from the claws and teeth of the cat.

Just like that hamster, we often make errors in judgement because our focus is too narrow. We are focused on ourselves, or on today, or even tomorrow, and the choices that we make based on that narrow focus, ultimately prove to be shortsighted, or even harmful, when we look back on them twenty years later. I have known quite a few people who, when they approached retirement, have fervently wished that they had done a better job of saving and investing when they were thirty years younger.

And it is exactly that sort of out-of-focus thinking, when viewed from a different perspective, that we often see in the spiritual stories of scripture. The first of these we will read today comes from first Samuel chapters eight and eleven, when the people of Israel demanded that God give them a king, not because they needed one, but because everyone else had one. (1 Samuel 8:4-20, 11:14-15)

⁴So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. ⁵They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to leadus, such as all the other nations have.”

⁶But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so, he prayed to the Lord. ⁷And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. ⁸As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. ⁹Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.”

¹⁰Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. ¹¹He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. ¹²Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. ¹³He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. ¹⁴He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. ¹⁵He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. ¹⁶Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle^[c] and donkeys he will take for his own use. ¹⁷He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. ¹⁸When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

¹⁹But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. ²⁰Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”

^11:14Then Samuel said to the people, “Come, let us go to Gilgal and there renew the kingship.” ¹⁵So all the people went to Gilgal and made Saul king in the presence of the Lord. There they sacrificed fellowship offerings before the Lord, and Saul and all the Israelites held a great celebration.

Samuel knew that having a king was a bad idea. Samuel told the people that it was a bad idea and that doing so would be offensive to God. But the story tells us that “the people refused to listen to Samuel,” They demanded a king, and God gave the Saul who had the same lack of vision that the people had.

But shortsightedness and lack of vision isn’t something that mystically ended as we move from the Old Testament to the New Testament, nor is it even something to which Jesus’ own family was immune. IN Mark 3:20-35, we hear this story of Jesus casting out demons:

²⁰Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. ²¹When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

²²And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons, he is driving out demons.”

²³So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? ²⁴If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. ²⁵If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. ²⁶And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. ²⁷In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. ²⁸Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, ²⁹but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

³⁰He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”

³¹Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. ³²A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

³³“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

³⁴Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! ³⁵Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

As I noted, there are two groups to be considered here, and each has their own expectations and their own agenda, and those expectations, as well as those agendas, constrain their vision and make them unable to gain a broader perspective. The first of these groups is Jesus’ own family. When they hear that Jesus is drawing such an enormous crowd, and that people are coming to see him cast out demons, their assumption is that he has gone completely around the bend, lost his mind, and gone insane. From their perspective, Jesus was their son, or their brother, the oldest son of Joseph the builder, a guy that was supposed to be home, managing the family business, and taking care of his mother. Despite the miracles that Mary saw at the time of Jesus’ birth, none of them can understand that Jesus might be more than just a tradesman who was supposed to be at home caring for his responsibilities to his family.

The second group that we see are the teachers of the law, who are so fixated on following the rules, preserving, and controlling the status quo, and protecting the insiders by keeping the riffraff outside where they belonged, they are unable to comprehend that Jesus, a common, uneducated tradesman, and laborer from the rural sticks, could possibly be doing what people said that he was doing. And, when they found that he was indeed casting out demons, simply because he was not one of them, a member of the established church leadership, and one of the insiders, they can only assume that God is not with him and so his power must come from the devil instead.

Just like the elders and leaders of Israel in the time of Samuel, and a lot like that hamster, the wants, wishes, desires, and biases of each group, cause them to be shortsighted, lose focus, and be unable to have enough perspective to see what was really happening. Twenty-one centuries later, all we need to do is open a newspaper, turn on a television, or open a web browser to see that people, inside and outside of the church, are still suffering from that same lack of vision. But in Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul passes along some advice on how to keep our lives in focus. (2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1)

¹³It is written: “I believed; therefore, I have spoken.” Since we have that same spirit offaith, we also believe and therefore speak, ¹⁴because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. ¹⁵All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

¹⁶Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. ¹⁷For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. ¹⁸So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

^5:1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.

Paul begins by laying out what our perspective should be, we believe in Jesus, that God raised Jesus from the dead, will one day raise each of us from the dead, and that same grace is extended to more people every day. With that perspective, Paul says, even when we are suffering and wasting away, inwardly we are renewed, and our momentary troubles are forgotten because our hope for the future outweighs any of our earthly struggles. Because we have this perspective, because we have this vision, we do not focus on our struggles, our pain, loss, grief, and suffering, but instead focus on our faith, our mission, and our eternal future.

When we fail to do that, when we fail to maintain that perspective, we begin to live our life out of focus and we are distracted by our wants, wishes, desires, biases, irrelevant theological disputes, partisan politics, pain, passion, power, and all sorts of other things then we become just like that hamster. We find ourselves struggling to open a gate that will only result in our being torn apart and eaten by a more powerful enemy than we ever imagined.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, let us keep our focus on our mission, our faith, and our eternal future.

Because only then will we be able to live our lives in focus.

You can find the video of this worship service here: https://youtu.be/6eMmREiy2fM

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.wordpress.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

2021, Blessing or Curse?

December 30, 2020 PastorPartridge Blogs Alliance, anti-blessing, bias, blessing, Christ, Christ Church, Christmas, church, confirmation bias, curse, Good News, Jesus, Jesus Christ, new year, newsletter, Ohio

2021, Blessing or Curse?

December 30, 2020

by John Partridge

Will this pandemic influenced, socially distanced, Christmas, and the following New Year, be filled with “good news of great joy” or feel more like we were hit by a freight train? And I think that my best guess is, it depends.

I was reminded this week of how we often find exactly the things for which we are looking. We can watch same news stories and Republicans and Democrats will each hear entirely different things. And each of those things will conform to the opinions and worldviews that they had before they watched it. Scientifically, it’s called “confirmation bias.” We tend to seek out views and opinions with which we agree, and even if we listen to unbiased reporting, what we hear is influenced by what we expected to hear.

The same is true of much more mundane things. I read a story once about an entomologist (you know, a guy who studies bugs) and his friend who were walking along a sidewalk in a big city. Suddenly the man said, “Did you hear that?” He stopped walking and started searching intently until he found a particular species of cricket in a crack in the sidewalk. The friend marveled that the man had been able to hear a cricket chirp over the noise of the city, but in answer the entomologist simply pulled a coin from his pocket and dropped it. Instantly a half dozen people turned and started looking for the dropped coin. Smiling, the man said, my coin was no louder than the cricket, but people tend to find the things that they are thinking about.

I don’t know if that story is true or not, but I know that our biases shape our daily lives, and our enjoyment of it, in powerful ways. Years ago, I had a coworker who saw the entire world as a terrible place that always seemed to be out to destroy her. Every conversation with her was one in which she described all the accidents and missed opportunities of her recent past and never once included the any stories of her successes, or even stories of her young son. Her focus on the negative entirely robbed her life of the joys that could be found in her everyday life.

And so, as we enter a new year, and as we continue to live with restrictions and precautions of this current pandemic, I urge you to be careful of your biases about how you look at the world. If we are looking for crickets or dropped coins, we are likely to find the things for which we are paying attention. If we look for sadness and disappointment, we will certainly find them. But, if we look for happiness, good news, and positive influences, I am convinced that we are more likely to find those instead.

If we look at the Christmas story with this in mind, we realize that Herod was always looking at the world to find the next person that might threaten his power and control. The Pharisees and the Sadducees, despite being biblical scholars, were always looking out for themselves. But the wise men were looking for signs and the shepherds were looking for hope. And so, when the star appeared in the heavens, everyone saw exactly what their focus and biases guided them to see. The wise men saw a sign, the shepherds found hope, Mary and Joseph found answered prayer, Herod found a threat, and the religious leaders were so focused on themselves that they almost missed it entirely.

And so, as we enter this new year, whether we find blessings or curses in 2021 is almost entirely up to us, to our attitudes, and to our biases. Rather than enter this new year searching for threats, or looking only for our own selfish interests, let us instead enter it as pilgrims in search of hope, faith, and love. We are, after all, the ambassadors that carry “good news of great joy, which is for all the people.” Despite the pandemic and its economic influence, despite our current, hyper-partisan political climate, despite our separation and isolation, if we are paying attention, I am convinced that there are, and will be, nuggets of good, silver linings, and pockets of joy that can be found. Let us keep our eyes on Jesus, who is the “good news of great joy” for all people, the hope of the world, and the Prince of Peace because whatever it is that we choose to seek…

…is almost certainly what we will find.

I choose to seek faith, hope, joy, peace, and love.

Will you?

Blessings,

Pastor John

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*Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.wordpress.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Thanksgiving Overflow?

November 25, 2020December 2, 2020 PastorPartridge Blogs blessing, generosity, gratitude, overflow, thanks, thanksgiving

Click here to watch the video, or scroll down to continue reading.

Thanksgiving Overflow?

November 26, 2020

By Pastor John Partridge

Deuteronomy 8:7-18 Luke 17:11-19 2 Corinthians 9:6-15

In the middle of a global pandemic, we are taking a day out of our schedule to give thanks. For many of us, our traditional celebrations have been dramatically changed, reduced, or even cancelled, and yet still we pause to give thanks. And that’s a good thing. Despite all the weirdness, difficulty, hardship, and yes, even death, when we pause long enough to reflect, we remember that we are, indeed, blessed. That busyness causes us to forget our blessings is not new. Almost as soon as the people of Israel had escaped their 400 years of slavery they already knew that once a better life came, that they would begin to forget just how blessed they were to have a better life. In Deuteronomy 8:7-18 we hear these words:

⁷For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; ⁸a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; ⁹a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.

¹⁰When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. ¹¹Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws, and his decrees that I am giving you this day. ¹²Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, ¹³and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, ¹⁴then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. ¹⁵He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. ¹⁶He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. ¹⁷You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” ¹⁸But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

God tells the people that once they had arrived in the Promised Land, and once their lives were better, they needed to occasionally pause from their busyness and remember that it was God who had given them that life. Despite their sweat and hard work, they would not have been where they were had it not been for God. Yes, they busted their guts, and yes they invested their sweat and their hard work, but if it had not been for God, they would have been doing all those things for the benefit of Egypt’s Pharaoh, and not for themselves.

They were indeed blessed.

And God simply asked them to occasionally pause and remember that it was God who gave them the ability to do the things that they did and to have the things that they had. But Jesus tells us that thanksgiving is more than something that we put on the calendar to do one day each year. In Luke 17:11-19, we hear a story that should resonate with us during a pandemic, as Jesus meets ten men who were afflicted with an incurable disease.

¹¹Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. ¹²As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance ¹³and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”

¹⁴When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed.

¹⁵One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. ¹⁶He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

¹⁷Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? ¹⁸Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” ¹⁹Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”

God has given us gifts. God has granted us health, and healthcare workers who struggle to make us well when we fall ill. But how often do we say thank you to those to whom we are indebted? Do we return to God and give thanks? Do we appreciate, and give thanks to our healthcare team? Do we bother to simply say “thank you” to the people around us who work to make our lives better, and easier?

It isn’t a question of setting aside a day to give thanks.

But do we live lives of thankfulness?

And, as you consider that, let us also remember Paul’s words in his letter to the church in Corinth that we find in 2 Corinthians 9:6-15.

⁶Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. ⁷Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. ⁸And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. ⁹As it is written:

“They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor;
their righteousness endures forever.”

¹⁰Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. ¹¹You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

¹²This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. ¹³Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. ¹⁴And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. ¹⁵Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

Paul reminds us that if we are to truly live lives of thankfulness, then we must also live lives of generosity. Our generosity is not a fee that we pay for God’s continued blessing and it is not a tax on the blessings that we have already received. Instead, our generosity should come from a heart that overflows with gratitude.

Generosity is a visible sign of genuine… thanksgiving.

And so, as we take time out to give thanks for the gifts that we have been given, as we give thanks for our homes, our lives, our health, our families, and everything else, let us remember to let out thanksgiving overflow into the lives of the people around us. Say “Thank you” to the people who make your life easier, say thank you to God for his indescribable gifts, and let us not insulate, segregate, and isolate our thanksgiving in one single day. Let us instead live lives of thanksgiving and allow that thanksgiving to overflow as gratitude and generosity.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

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* Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.wordpress.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Whining About Winning

September 19, 2020September 21, 2020 PastorPartridge Sermon blessing, complain, faith, grumble, suffering, whining, winning

Whining About Winning

September 20, 2020*

By Pastor John Partridge

Exodus 16:2-15 Philippians 1:21-30 Matthew 20:1-16

Do you like horses? Many of us do.

John Wayne once said that the best thing for the inside of a man is the outside of a horse.

But even if we don’t keep horses, or ride horses, or even if we don’t like horses very much, we often talk about them because horses have been partners with humanity for so long that they have become ingrained in in our language.

Most of us are familiar with some older phrases in English that grew out of our pre-industrial history. We say things like “biting the hand that feed you,” (which is pretty self-explanatory), or say that something, or someone is “long in the tooth.” That phrase, “long in the tooth” became a part of our language because horses’ teeth continue to grow as long as they live, so older horses, naturally, have longer teeth. And that brings us to the phrase “looking a gift-horse in the mouth.” Because a horse’s teeth can tell you a lot about how old it is, and what kind of care it has been given, it was, and is, standard practice to look in a horse’s mouth before you bought one. But if someone was giving you a horse as a gift, it was bad form, or even rude, to look in the mouth of a horse for which you paid nothing. After all, why would you complain about something that you were getting for free?

But throughout scripture, and in our present generation, the people of God have a bad habit of doing exactly that. Human beings seem to make a habit of complaining, and that complaining, grumbling, whining, often continues even when God answers our prayers, gives us everything that we wanted, and even pours out blessings for which we hadn’t even hoped. We begin in Exodus 16:2-15 where we find the people of Israel who, after four hundred years of slavery and captivity in Egypt, had been were finally free, and who had witnesses God’s protection as he destroyed the Egyptian army that had been pursuing them.

²In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. ³The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

⁴Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. ⁵On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”

⁶So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, ⁷and in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?” ⁸Moses also said, “You will know that it was the Lord when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord.”

⁹Then Moses told Aaron, “Say to the entire Israelite community, ‘Come before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’”

¹⁰While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud.

¹¹The Lord said to Moses, ¹²“I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning, you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.’”

¹³That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning, there was a layer of dew around the camp. ¹⁴When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. ¹⁵When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.

For four hundred and thirty years, the people of Israel pray that God would rescue them and, eventually, he does. Then they pray that God would rescue them from the Egyptian army that is charging after them to kill them or return them to their slavery. And they watch, as God parts the Red Sea, saves all of Israel, and destroys the chariots and horses that had been pursuing them. And then… they complain and grumble that God doesn’t love them enough, that there isn’t enough food to eat, they maybe they ought to just return to Egypt on their own because at least when they were slaves, they had enough food.

Let me say that again. They were rescued from slavery, given their freedom, watched as God destroyed the most powerful military machine on the planet, and then complained that God didn’t love them enough and maybe they should just give up and go back because slavery was better than freedom. It sounds ridiculous, but this is not an exception. Human beings do this sort of thing far more often than we care to admit. In Matthew 20:1-16, Jesus tells an entirely believable parable about a landowner who needed to hire workers to harvest the grapes in his vineyard.

^20:1 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. ²He agreed to pay them a denariusfor the day and sent them into his vineyard.

³“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. ⁴He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ ⁵So they went.

“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. ⁶About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

⁷“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

⁸“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

⁹“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. ¹⁰So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. ¹¹When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ¹²‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

¹³“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? ¹⁴Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. ¹⁵Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

¹⁶“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

So, let’s review. There were a bunch of people who needed work and gathered in the town square to meet people who would hire them. The landowner needed people to help with his harvest and offered them work. He offered them the common wage for a day’s labor, in advance, and they accepted. Several times, throughout the day, he hired more people and offered to pay them “whatever is right.” And then, at the end of the day, he paid them the agreed upon wage, or more, and… they complained. Because the landowner was generous, and paid everyone well, the people who had been hired first grumbled that they should have been paid more, even though they agreed that the wage he offered was fair before he hired them.

But what about us in the twenty-first century? After two millennia of following Jesus and studying his teaching, do we have it all together or are we just as prone to whine and moan and look a gift-horse in the mouth? In Philippians 1:21-30, Paul writes to one of the churches in Greece and says this:

To all God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons:

²Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

³I thank my God every time I remember you. ⁴In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy ⁵because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, ⁶being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

⁷It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. ⁸God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

⁹And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, ¹⁰so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, ¹¹filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

¹²Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. ¹³As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guardand to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. ¹⁴And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.

¹⁵It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. ¹⁶The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. ¹⁷The former, preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. ¹⁸But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.

Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, ¹⁹for I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. ²⁰I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. ²¹For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. ²²If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! ²³I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; ²⁴but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. ²⁵Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, ²⁶so that through my being with you again your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me.

²⁷Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel ²⁸without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God. ²⁹For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, ³⁰since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.

Paul starts out his letter by making it clear that everyone knew that he was in prison because of Jesus. But, because Paul was in prison, other followers of Jesus became fearless in proclaiming and sharing the gospel message. Different groups had different reasons, but the response to Paul’s imprisonment by the community of faith was to preach louder and more often. And so, even though Paul was suffering, he rejoiced because he knew that good things had resulted from his pain and discomfort.

Paul believes that eventually, he will be released from prison and continue preaching. But he knows that if he dies, he looks forward to an eternity with Jesus. And so he tells the church that no matter what happens, they should conduct themselves in a manner worthy of Jesus Christ, work together as one to promote the gospel message, and do so without fear by those who would oppose them. For in the end, we have been given the gifts of both believing and of suffering. Because, as Paul explained, our suffering in the name of Jesus, is still a part of God’s plan, and good can still grow out of it.

The people of Israel were whining about winning. They got everything that they had wanted for more than four hundred years. They were witnesses to God’s power in ways that no one had ever seen before. And still they complained.

The people in Jesus’ parable were paid everything that they had agreed to, and more, and still they complained that they thought they deserved more.

But Paul rejoiced while he was suffering in prison and encouraged the church to do the same thing.

The difference was that Paul remembered to look at the big picture and remembered that God had a plan for the world.

So, what will we do?

Do we look a gift-horse in the mouth?

Do we complain because we can’t see the plan?

Do we think that we should be paid more?

Are we angry when God blesses someone else, or bitter that others are given more than we think is fair?

Do we think that the blessings that we have received aren’t enough?

Or do we remember to look for the big picture? Do we remember the many blessings that we have already been given and the untold prayers that have already been answered?

Rather than complain, in the middle of our pain and suffering, let us strive together as one for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who might oppose us. Let us remember that both our belief in Jesus, and our suffering in his name are blessings from God. May we be like Paul, so that our time of trial and hardship, through the blessing of Jesus Christ, can become our greatest time of victory and growth.

You can find the video of this worship service here: https://youtu.be/h_g-ICMSbrA

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.wordpress.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Church Can’t Save You

August 1, 2020August 1, 2020 PastorPartridge Sermon adoption, blessing, church, inheritance, Jesus, miracle

Church Can’t Save You

August 02, 2020*

By Pastor John Partridge

Genesis 32:22-31 Romans 9:1-5 Matthew 14:13-21

It seems like everyone is always looking for the easy way out.

You can’t blame us. Easy always seems better than hard. But often, the only way to get from “worse” to “better” is to travel down the hard road. If you want to be an accountant, an engineer, or a nurse, there’s no easy way that doesn’t involve going to college. And, if you want to be a doctor, then the only path that gets you there goes through medical school and some grueling years as an intern and a resident.

But that doesn’t stop us from trying.

As we do battle with the Coronavirus, we know that developing a new vaccine from scratch typically takes five to ten years. We also know that there has never been a successful vaccine against any of the other viruses in the coronavirus family. But a vaccine is the “easiest” path forward that most of us can see, so we’re going to spend a lot of time, money, and effort in hopes that our best doctors and scientists can do what’s never been done before. And others are pinning their hopes on a variety of unproven drug therapies that might work, that might not work, or that might be more dangerous than the virus they’re trying to fight.

But, as is often the case, the easy way, may not be the best way. In fact, the easy way, may not get us anywhere near our intended destination.

And the same is true in the spiritual world. The easy road may not lead us to the place we had hoped.

But before we get to that, let’s go back to the story of Jacob, and rejoin his story as he prepared to meet his long-estranged brother Esau, from whom he stole his father’s birthright. (Genesis 32:22-31)

²²That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. ²³After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. ²⁴So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. ²⁵When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. ²⁶Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

²⁷The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

²⁸Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, [Israel means “struggles with God”] because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

²⁹Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”

But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.

³⁰So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face [Penial means “face of God”], and yet my life was spared.”

³¹The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip.

God appears to Jacob in human form (which, in theological language, is called a theophany). All night long, Jacob wrestles with God and, in the morning, demands a blessing from him. Because of our understanding of the events of the New Testament, the name that we usually use for God in human flesh, is Jesus. So, if you want to bend your understanding of time and space a little bit, we might think that Jacob spends the night wrestling with Jesus. And, if you think that’s impossible, consider John 8:56-59 where Jesus argued with the leaders of his church saying:

⁵⁶Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

⁵⁷“You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

⁵⁸“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” ⁵⁹At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.

In any case, Jacob wrestles with God, receives God’s blessing, and is given the name, Israel, or wrestles with God, that will remain with his family for thousands of years. Then, in Matthew 14:13-21, Jesus performs miracles as a sign that he is the fulfillment of that blessing, and the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, and one of those is the spectacular moment when Jesus feeds ten to fifteen thousand people, possibly more, with the contents of one small boy’s sack lunch. This story begins immediately after the execution of Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist.

¹³When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. ¹⁴When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

¹⁵As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”

¹⁶Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

¹⁷“We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.

¹⁸“Bring them here to me,” he said. ¹⁹And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. ²⁰They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. ²¹The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

In the gospel stories of his miracles, Jesus demonstrates his command and authority over time and space, over the wind, rain and weather, over disease, demons, and death, and, in this story, over the laws of matter itself. The contents of a small boy’s lunch, five small loaves of bread (probably small flat breads like a pita) and two fish are multiplied to feed five thousand men, and all the women and children that had come with them.

And so, as we come to church, we often arrive at the belief that everyone who believes the story of Jesus, is adopted into the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and, like the people of Israel, we inherit the blessings of God.

Not so fast.

Let’s not be too hasty.

It was exactly that line of thinking, in the time of the disciples, that led the Apostle Paul to weep over the Jewish people of Israel. In Romans 9:1-5, we hear him explain it this way:

^9:1 I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit— ²I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. ³For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, ⁴the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship, and the promises. ⁵Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

Paul says that he weeps over the people of his own race, the people of Israel, who are, as we know, the genetic and philosophical descendants of Jacob and the inheritors of his blessing. But Paul’s grief was that the people believed that this was all that was necessary. They believed that being the heirs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was enough.

But it wasn’t.

Even though Paul was the ultimate Jew, who was born into the right family, who followed all the right rituals, who went to all the right schools, and had all the best teachers, Paul knew that his genetic lineage was not enough. Paul knew that the Jews of his day were excluding themselves from God’s kingdom and from God’s blessing by their failure to believe, and to follow, Jesus Christ. As evidence, Paul points to Isaac’s half-brother Ishmael and, by inference, to Jacob’s twin brother Esau. Even though they were genetically connected to Abraham and to Isaac, the blessing of God did not automatically flow to them. Even though Ishmael and Esau believed in God, they did not follow God in the way that Isaac and Jacob did, and so, God’s blessing did not come to them, or to their families, in the same way. And Paul says that this same rule applies to all the Jews when it comes to their belief in Jesus. Paul’s message is that the promise of God does not come to us because of our family ties, or our genetics, or our church membership, but only to those who choose to accept the gift, follow God, and live a life patterned after that belief.

In more modern language, we need look no further than Billy Sunday, a professional baseball player and internationally known evangelist of the early 20^th century, who said,

“Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.”

Just as Ishmael and Esau walked away from God’s blessing, Paul wept as he watched his own Jewish race, whom he loved more than life itself, walk away from the blessings of God because of their failure to accept, and follow, Jesus.

And Paul’s message for us is pretty much the same. We aren’t saved because our family was saved. We aren’t saved because we believe in God, or because we go to a Bible believing church, or because we believe that Jesus was a real person, or because we believe that the stories in the New Testament actually happened. We are saved, and we receive the blessings of God, because we have put our full faith and trust in Jesus, and allow that faith to change the way that we live our lives, as we pattern our lives, our behavior, and our actions after the life and the teaching of Jesus.

So yes, church is important. And yes, I am convinced that every person who believes in Jesus must belong to a fellowship of Christian believers (whether you call that a church or not). But going to church is not the easy way out. Going to church will not save you no more that going to a garage will make you an automobile.

Each person must put their full faith, and trust in Jesus, and then live a life that reveals Jesus to the world around them.

That is not always going to be the easiest path. But it’s the only path that leads to the destination that matters.

Have a great week everybody.

You can find the video of this worship service here: https://youtu.be/vElLkqp1aZ0

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.wordpress.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

The Anti-Blessings of God

June 13, 2020June 13, 2020 PastorPartridge Sermon anti-blessing, blessing, character, endurance, endure, hard, hope, life, love, pain, perseverence, prayer, suffering

The Anti-Blessings of God

June 14, 2020*

By Pastor John Partridge

Genesis 18:1-15 Matthew 9:35 – 10:23 Romans 5:1-8

How would you feel if you prayed that God would protect you and pour out blessings on you, and what you got was trouble, suffering, and pain? Would you feel protected and blessed?

What if you prayed, in the middle of your pain, for the suffering to end, and it just kept going, and going? Would you feel as if God answered your prayers?

And imagine that you spent your entire life praying for God to answer one specific prayer, one that everyone around you seemed to have answered, and after a lifetime of prayer, you gave up simply because the answer to your prayer was no longer even possible. Would you feel blessed?

Contrary to what we might want, and contrary to what some television preachers might tell you, God isn’t a genie that dispenses wealth and happiness in answer to our prayers like some kind of cosmic vending machine. God is more complicated than that just as our lives are more complicated than simplistic sayings like “earning a living” and “raising a family.” Life can be hard, but we worship a God who understands our needs better than we do and who dispenses blessings that are far more complex than those things for which we might have asked. Rather than giving us things that we think we want; God blesses us with gifts that he knows we will need. Unfortunately, we often find that these “anti-blessings” are gifts for which we would never have prayed and are gifts that we didn’t want.

In Genesis 18:1-15, we hear the story of how Abraham met God, and was given a gift for which he and Sarah, his wife, had prayed for decades. But now, as Abraham and Sarah had given up on that prayer, after both were long past the age of having children, God begins the fulfillment of an almost forgotten promise.

^18:1 The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. ²Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.

³He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. ⁴Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. ⁵Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way—now that you have come to your servant.”

“Very well,” they answered, “do as you say.”

⁶So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. “Quick,” he said, “get three seahs [about 36 pounds] of the finest flour and knead it and bake some bread.”

⁷Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it. ⁸He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree.

⁹“Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked him.

“There, in the tent,” he said.

¹⁰Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”

Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. ¹¹Abraham and Sarah were already very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. ¹²So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?”

¹³Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ ¹⁴Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

¹⁵Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”

But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.”

God visits Abraham decades after he changed his name from Abram, which means “father of many,” to Abraham, which means “father of nations.” By the time of this visit, Abram and Sarah are in their eighties or nineties, or as the passage notes, “already very old, and Sarah was well past the age of childbearing.” And yet, God honors his promises, and when the visitor returns a year later, the impossible has happened and Sarah, the octogenarian, has given birth to a son named Isaac. This is amazing, and miraculous, but imagine the pain that the two of them endured for generations. Imagine introducing yourself as “the father of nations” but having no children. Why did God allow that to happen? Isn’t the creation of these circumstances extraordinarily cruel? What could God possibly have had in mind?

We will come back to that, but now, let’s consider the instructions that Jesus gave to his disciples, and the warnings that he gave them, and us, at the same time in Matthew 9:35 – 10:23.

³⁵Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness. ³⁶When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. ³⁸Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

^10:1 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.

²These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; ³Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; ⁴Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

⁵These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. ⁶Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. ⁷As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ ⁸Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.

⁹“Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts— ¹⁰no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep. ¹¹Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave. ¹²As you enter the home, give it your greeting. ¹³If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. ¹⁴If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town, and shake the dust off your feet. ¹⁵Truly I tell you; it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.

¹⁶“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. ¹⁷Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. ¹⁸On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. ¹⁹But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time, you will be given what to say, ²⁰for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

²¹“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. ²²You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. ²³When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.

When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because he saw people who, like sheep, were lost, aimless, alone, and suffering from a total lack of unity. To combat that isolation, Jesus sent the disciples into the world to cast out spirits and heal the sick. And while that sounds a bit like sending gallant knights on a brave quest, this blessing, and these gifts, come with a warning that would turn your hair white. Jesus warns the disciples, and us, that the world isn’t going to be appreciative or grateful for the message that we carry. Instead, Jesus frighteningly compares those that carry the message of the kingdom of God to sheep among wolves. The disciples are warned that they will be arrested, judged, hated, beaten by their own churches, persecuted, and made homeless when they do what he has sent them to do. But, at the same time, they will be given gifts from God, be accompanied by God, and be used by the Spirit of God.

These anti-blessings are gifts that none of us want. Jesus isn’t promising that his followers will have wealth, comfort, happiness, and career advancement. He is promising misery, suffering, pain, and death. These are not the things that you would find on a recruiting poster, these are the things that wake you in a cold sweat run screaming into the night.

And so again, just as we did with Abraham, we ask ourselves, “What could God possibly have in mind?”

We find some of the answers in Paul’s letter to the church in Rome (Romans 5:1-8).

^5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. ³Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

⁶You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Paul explains to the church that the things we find through our relationship with Jesus aren’t wealth, prosperity, and comfort. What we find in Jesus… is peace with God. Paul says that if we want to learn perseverance, we learn it through suffering. If we want to build character, we build it through persevering through suffering. And if we want to find hope, we find it while we are journeying through suffering and building character. If you ask someone if they would like to learn patience, most will say yes. But we all know that the only way to learn patience, is to live through difficult circumstances that require it. The same is true here. While everyone wants to have hope, and character, the path we follow as we learn them takes us through dark places that are filled with pain and suffering.

So why did God allow Abraham and Sarah to endure, and suffer, for fifty or seventy years while they waited for God to fulfill his promise? Perhaps it is because God needed a man and woman with a specific set of skills and gifts to be the parents of Isaac. Perhaps God needed parents with perseverance, character, and an abundance of hope. God called Abraham and Sarah to be the parents of his new nation, but first he needed them to become the kind of people that Isaac, Israel, and the world, would need.

The same applies to the disciples and to us. God calls us as we are, but to do the work that he has called us to do, it is often necessary for us to become the people that he needs. And the journey from where we are to where God need us to be often passes through pain and suffering so that we can learn perseverance, character, and hope.

So yes, God just might be answering your prayer for his blessing when you are on the receiving end of trouble, suffering and pain.

And yes, when your suffering lasts longer than you had hoped, and even long after you prayed for it to end, God may just be answering your prayer in ways that you hadn’t expected.

While none of us wants these kinds of anti-blessings, God might just be allowing them today so that we can become the people that he needs tomorrow.

Have a great week everybody.

You can find the video of this worship service here: https://youtu.be/8ywdXlDfGjI

Did you enjoy reading this?

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.wordpress.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Performance Review

February 17, 2019February 20, 2019 PastorPartridge Podcast, Sermon blessing, curse, life, poor, reality, reports, resurrection, rich, truth

Performance Review

February 17, 2019*

By Pastor John Partridge

Jeremiah 17:5-10 Luke 6:17-26 1 Corinthians 15:12-20

When was the last time you had a performance review?

Both in secular jobs and in pastoral ministry, my job performance has been periodically evaluated. Theoretically, this is supposed to happen annually, but in reality, my supervisors and, to a lesser extent, my Staff Parish Relations Committees, have occasionally missed those deadlines. But regardless of how often they happen, most all of us have experienced them with some regularity. We sit in a room together with our boss, or with a committee, and we discuss how things have been going, what things are going well, what things need to be improved, and what things we might focus on in the months ahead. Although it is almost always stressful, sometimes the process is generally painless, and at other times, “painless” is clearly not a word that we would use to describe them.

But can you imagine what it would be like to be reviewed by God for your job performance as one of his followers or as a follower of Jesus Christ?

With that in mind, we begin this morning by reading Jeremiah 17:5-10, where we discover something that sounds very much like a performance review from God.

⁵This is what the Lord says:

“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
    who draws strength from mere flesh
    and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
⁶That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
    they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
    in a salt land where no one lives.

⁷“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
    whose confidence is in him.
⁸They will be like a tree planted by the water
    that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
    its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
    and never fails to bear fruit.”

⁹The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?

¹⁰“I the Lord search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
according to what their deeds deserve.”

There is some hard-hitting, close to home, preaching here that hits many of us right where we live.

“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who draws strength from mere flesh
and whose heart turns away from the Lord.”

Jeremiah wastes no time and does not fool with political correctness when he says that we should not ever put our trust in kings, or presidents, or human governments, or even in pastors, priests, popes, or churches led by humans. When we put too much trust in human beings, whether in governments or in the men and women who oversee our churches, that misplaced trust can cause our hearts to turn away from God and we become like a bush that grows in a wasteland, always wanting more, never having enough, and never being satisfied. But, if we put our whole trust and confidence in God, then we will be like a tree that is planted by a lake or a river, never in fear of drought or summer, or sunshine, and always being fruitful and giving to the world around it.

But the last line of this passage strikes us most of all.

“I the Lord search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
according to what their deeds deserve.”

That clearly sounds like a performance review.

And not just a performance review, but a merit-based performance review. God will examine our hearts and minds and reward each person based on our conduct, our behavior, and our actions.

This serious business. There is not a lot of “wiggle room” here. You either perform, or you don’t, and your reward will be based on your performance.

But there are some caveats, or qualifications, that need to be made to that sort of teaching. It needs to be explained because many of the people of Israel, or the Old Testament followers of God, read passages like that and began to believe that since rich people seemed to be blessed by God, then they must be good people, and since poor people seem to not be blessed by God, then the poor must be sinners and have somehow made God angry at them. That line of thinking is still heard today among those who preach what is referred to as the “prosperity gospel.” The prosperity gospel says, “If you truly believe, or if you only believe hard enough, if only your faith is strong enough, then God will make you healthy and rich.” But that isn’t at all what Jeremiah was saying. And, in truth, this understanding became so common that Jesus and the disciples spent a considerable time preaching against it. One of the most famous of these lessons in contained in Luke 6:17-26 where we hear this:

¹⁷He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, ¹⁸who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by impure spirits were cured, ¹⁹and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.

²⁰Looking at his disciples, he said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.
²¹Blessed are you who hunger now,
    for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.
²²Blessed are you when people hate you,
    when they exclude you and insult you
    and reject your name as evil,
        because of the Son of Man.

²³“Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

²⁴“But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have already received your comfort.
²⁵Woe to you who are well fed now,
    for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
    for you will mourn and weep.
²⁶Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
    for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

Jesus us in the middle of healing a crowd of people from all over the region. Some had physical illnesses, others had spiritual problems, and some might have had mental illnesses (as we understand them) as well. Jesus was so filled with the spirit and the power of God that people were being healed simply by touching him. But in the midst of this, Jesus looks directly at his disciples and gives a speech. Clearly, this is something of vital importance that they needed to know, and which was illustrated in some way by the healing that was going on in front of them.

And Jesus’ message is that the kingdom of God belongs to poor people, that hungry people are blessed, that people who are experiencing great sadness, sorrow, and depression are not cursed, but will eventually rediscover laughter. Jesus wants this followers to remember that when life stinks, you are still blessed by God, and more than that, if your life stinks because you are a follower of Jesus, or because you are doing the work of Jesus Christ, then you are blessed precisely because you are hated, insulted, excluded, and rejected.

If your life stinks because you are a follower of Jesus Christ and because you are acting like a follower of Jesus Christ, then remember that God’s own prophets were similarly mistreated. God’s prophets were still loved, honored, and blessed by God even when the world treated them like crap.

And so are you.

If… you are mistreated because of Jesus.

If you live a life that honors God and does the work of Jesus Christ, even if that life stinks, you need to know that you are piling up blessings that may not ever be received until after you meet Jesus face-to-face.

At the same time, contrary to popular opinion, being rich might just mean that you are cursed by God, and not blessed. If you are rich, or comfortable, or well fed, or spend your days in joy and laughter, or if everyone speaks well of you and thinks that you’re great, if you live well because you say the things that people want to hear… and you have forgotten to live a life that honors God, and have forgotten to live a life that does the deeds and actions of a follower of Jesus, then the only blessing that you will ever get is the one that you have now.

And you will have all of eternity to regret the choices that you have made.

Once again, that clearly describes a merit based, performance review.

But don’t let the thought of a performance review fill you with anxiety or uncertainty. Instead, be reassured and remember the words of Paul in his letter to the church in Corinth where he reminds them of what is true and real (1 Corinthians 15:12-20).

¹²But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? ¹³If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. ¹⁴And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. ¹⁵More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. ¹⁶For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. ¹⁷And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. ¹⁹If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

²⁰But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

Paul says that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then nothing that we have done is worth anything. If Christ has not risen from the dead, then everyone is lost, and no one has anything in which to find hope. But Christ is real. And Christ really did rise from the dead. And if Jesus rose from the dead, then he is the first born from the dead, or as Paul said, the first fruits of the dead. And that means that everyone who has aligned themselves with Jesus, everyone who has become a follower of Jesus, carries with them the promise of resurrection from the dead.

Paul’s message is that resurrection is real. The Bible is real. The Gospel message is real. And in that reality, we have a future if we believe in Jesus Christ. But when we believe in Jesus, we must also live for Jesus by doing the things that he has called us, and commanded us, to do.

Rest in the knowledge that, if you have put your trust in Jesus Christ, then you will be see resurrection.

Be confident that we will live, with Jesus, in God’s eternal house.

But be – daily – spurred to action, be motivated, by remembering that there will be a performance review on the day of judgement.

Did you enjoy reading this?

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Pastor Partridge

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