Testing Love

June 30, 2024August 1, 2024 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Broadway, Christ, church, Corinth, Corinthians, David, faith, fake, God, Goliath, Gospel, Jairus, Jesus, Jonathan, love, Methodist, Ohio, Partridge, real, Saul, Street, test, United

Testing Love

June 30, 2024*

By Pastor John Partridge

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

We hear the words “I love you” often. We hear them from our loved ones, we hear them on television and in the movies, and we hear the word “love” thrown around by churches, ministry groups, rescue groups, and even government officials in an almost constant stream.

But what if love came with a test?

What would it look like if there was a test to determine if love was real? Is there a way for us to tell if the people who throw around the word “love” really do love, or if they are only using the word to manipulate and to appear to be something more than they really are?

And, although on the surface it may appear that our scriptures for today are not connected, as we dig a little deeper what we find is that they all reveal the truth about the love of the people in them. We begin once again with the story of David. In this passage from 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27, David learns that King Saul, and his son Jonathan, David’s best, and closest, friend, have died in battle. This is the moment that David knows that Saul will no longer hunt for him, or send his entire army to hunt for him, so that he could be captured and put to death, the moment that David learns that he is no longer a fugitive. This is the moment that David realizes that his anointing as the king of Israel by the prophet Samuel might finally become a reality. But as these realities come into his mind, this is how David reacts:

^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 gazellelies 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!”

Rather than rejoice over the end of being hunted or looking forward to finally having a chance at becoming king, rather than cursing the man who expended so much effort in trying to destroy him… David mourns. David weeps over the loss of his best friend but also over the loss of Israel’s greatest warrior and admired king. Despite Saul’s madness and his persecution of David, David never stopped loving him as his friend and mentor or stopped admiring him and respecting him as Israel’s king.

This is the moment that tests David’s sincerity, and we see that David didn’t just use the word “love” because it was politically expedient or momentarily popular, David’s tears and songs of mourning reveal that his love for both Saul and Jonathan was real.

Curiously, there are two stories, which we have heard and read many times, from the Gospel of Mark, which illustrate this same sort of test for the sincerity of love, trust, and faith and we read these stories this morning from Mark 5:21-43, where it says:

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.

First, Jesus meets Jairus, one of the synagogue leaders, or archisynagōgon, who was a powerful and influential man. Far from our thinking that he was the local church lay leader, because there was no such thing as the separation of church, state, or culture, the archisynagogon was the church lay leader, mayor, city administrator, community organizer, and cultural ambassador all rolled up in one person, at least as far as their Roman overlords allowed. But when his daughter was dying, Jairus didn’t go to a rabbi, or to the temple authorities, or to some Roman government official, he came to see Jesus. And when people told him that it was too late, and that his daughter was already dead, Jesus encouraged him to “just believe,” and, despite the laughter of his family and friends who understood that death was permanent and that resurrection was impossible, his love for his daughter allowed him to trust Jesus anyway.

Likewise, after searching for twelve years and seeing every doctor, shaman, healer, and charlatan that she could find, and after spending every penny that she ever had, this poor suffering woman, rather than giving up, thought that she would try one more time. Despite being classified as unclean and being prohibited from coming in contact with “normal” people, she sneaks in from behind everyone, and reaches through the crowd just so that she can touch the fringe on Jesus’ outer garment. When she was tested, there was nothing fake about this poor woman’s suffering nor was there anything fake about her faith.

And I want you to keep those stories in your mind as we read Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 8:7-15 because Paul understands that sometimes people, and churches, sometimes give lip-service to love. We say that we love Jesus, but we don’t act like it, and we say that we love the people around us, because we know that we’re supposed to, but when push comes to shove, we don’t act very much like we love them. Paul says…

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 the people in the churches of Corinth are fantastic. They have strong faith, vast knowledge, they are earnest in the things that they do and in the love that they began when they first heard the stories of the gospel.

But Paul wants to test the sincerity of their love.

Paul wants to make sure that they aren’t just giving lip-service to love without really acting like they love. Paul wants to test their love by comparing their earnestness, their passion, against the earnestness and passion of others. He points out that when there was a need, the church in Corinth was the first to step up and give to meet the need, but now Paul asks if their love will compel them to finish what they started. The test, Paul says, isn’t that they should give until they themselves are in need, but that they should give from their abundance until those in need become their equals.

That is quite a test… and it asks a lot of us.

The test of love isn’t just to feed the hungry, but to give from our abundance, not just to feed the poor for a day, but to help the poor, and lift them up, until the poor become our equals. That isn’t a once and done kind of a thing. Like Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christians, you should be loving enough that your eager willingness to do a project may be matched by your completion of it.

Starting a project to help others is a good thing.

But finishing that project is the real test of love.

That’s asking a lot.

But real love isn’t cheap, and we might wonder…

…will our love pass the test?

*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 quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.comThe “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

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David’s Faith… in David

June 25, 2024 PastorPartridge Blogs Alliance, Andre the Giant, Broadway, Christ, church, David, faith, God, Goliath, Gospel, Jesus, limits, Methodist, Ohio, Partridge, preparation, prepare, Street, United

David’s Faith in… David

June 25, 2024

by Pastor John Partridge

This past week at our church Annual Conference meeting, our Bishop, Tracy Smith Malone, preached a message in which she shared the story of David and Goliath, and framed David’s self-confidence as being a matter of David’s faith in God.

And that’s true.

But it’s more than that.

We can all agree that the story of David and Goliath is clear that while King Saul, and his entire army, were in fear and panic of the size, strength, skill, and power of the Philistine warrior Goliath, David’s faith enabled him to be the only one who had the self-confidence and faith to meet Goliath in single combat, one on one and man-to-man.

But David’s confidence wasn’t entirely faith-based. There was more to it than that and while we usually do a respectable job of preaching the faith part, the other part is just as important. Let me back up and lay some groundwork before I go any farther.

First, it was well-known that a skilled slinger could outrange an archer, strike a moving target at two hundred yards, and were said to be so accurate that they could aim for a specific part of a target’s face. Typical sling stones were 2 to 3 inches in diameter (5-7 cm) and weighed as much as a half-pound (0.25kg). These projectiles would be flung at 100 to 150 miles per hour (160 to 240 kph). Stones of that size, thrown at that speed, could kill by a blow to the head, or by rupturing an organ. Second, we also know that David, spending years in the fields watching his father’s sheep, had ample time, and plenty of rocks, with which to practice his skills with a sling and to become proficient. Third, the stories that we have of David rescuing his sheep by killing a bear and a lion can be offered as evidence of his skill, his fearlessness, and his faith.

And so, you see, David not only had confidence in God, but he also had confidence in… David. He had done the work of preparation. David had practiced during all those lonely years in the wilderness with his father’s sheep. David knew what he could do. He had developed, and honed, his skill with his sling, and he had been battle tested in his encounters with both a lion and a bear.

Yes, David had faith in God. But David had done the work of preparation, and he knew that those two things combined would bring victory against Goliath.

David wasn’t foolish. He didn’t just leap into a fight that he couldn’t hope to win and put all his eggs in the basket of his faith. David did the work of preparation. He developed his skill, and he tested it against deadly opponents. David knew that he had what it took to win, but he also knew that in a fight against a skilled adversary, anything can happen. David did the work of preparation; he did everything that he could to be ready… and the rest he trusted to God.

That was David’s faith… and it’s a model that we would do well to remember.

Faith isn’t jumping off a cliff and hoping that God will save you. Faith is buying a parachute, learning how to use it, and then jumping off a cliff… and trusting that God will use and guide your skill to bring about the desired result.

Faith is important.

But God still expects us to do the work of preparation.

________________________________________________

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The Limits of Preparation

June 23, 2024June 23, 2024 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Andre the Giant, Broadway, Christ, church, David, faith, God, Goliath, Gospel, Jesus, limits, Methodist, Ohio, Partridge, preparation, Saul, Shaq, share, stones, Street, United, Wilt Chamberlain

The Limits of Preparation

June 23, 2024*

By Pastor John Partridge

1 Samuel 17:1a, 4-11, 19-23, 32-49 Mark 4:35-41 Corinthians 6:1-13

German Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke was a brilliant military strategist in the 19th Century. He is known today for a quote that has gained popular traction in a shortened form that simply says, “No plan survives contact with the enemy”. This saying applies outside of its obvious military roots because no matter how much we plan or prepare, life is always more complicated and unexpected than our preparations. Olympic athletes train in all sorts of weather, they get hundreds of our nation’s best scientists to develop and oversee their training programs, nutritionists to maximize their diet for the best possible outcome, and still, on the day of the race, they can turn an ankle, trip over an unseen obstacle on the way to the race, or even stumble when a stray cat runs across the track. Life is unpredictable and while preparation must still be an important part of our planning, our preparation and planning won’t always get us across the finish line.

Let’s begin with a story that we have all probably heard before, the story of David and Goliath. I’m going to assume that most of us are familiar with the story, so I’m going skip around a little to save some time. We begin reading this story today from 1 Samuel 17:1a, 4-11, 19-23, 32-49.

Now the Philistines gathered their forces for war and assembled at Sokoh in Judah.

⁴A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span. [9 ft. 9 inches, for reference, Wilt Chamberlain and Shaquille O’Neill are 7’1” and Andre the Giant was 7’4”] ⁵He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels [125 pounds]; ⁶on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. ⁷His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels. [15 pounds] His shield bearer went ahead of him.

⁸Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. ⁹If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.” ¹⁰Then the Philistine said, “This day I defy the armies of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.” ¹¹On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.

²⁴Whenever the Israelites saw the man, they all fled from him in great fear.

³²David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.”

³³Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.”

³⁴But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, ³⁵I went after it, struck it, and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. ³⁶Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. ³⁷The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”

Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you.”

³⁸Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. ³⁹David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.

“I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So, he took them off. ⁴⁰Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.

⁴¹Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. ⁴²He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him. ⁴³He said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. ⁴⁴“Come here,” he said, “and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!”

⁴⁵David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. ⁴⁶This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. ⁴⁷All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”

⁴⁸As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. ⁴⁹Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground.

There’s a lot that can be said about what we find in that reading, but here are the things that I want to highlight: First, Goliath was the champion of the Philistine army. He wasn’t just big; he was the strongest and most skillful soldier of all the Philistines such that none of their other soldiers could beat him. Second, when Goliath offered to end the war by fighting one-on-one with anybody from Israel’s army, Saul the king, as well as his bodyguards, all of the professional soldiers, as well as all of those men, like David’s bothers, that had been conscripted, were terrified because no one, trained or not, could imagine that they could fight Goliath and win. Third, their fear was so great, that whenever they saw Goliath, they ran… but not David. Fourth, Goliath, Saul, and David all spent time in preparation.

Goliath had spent his entire life as a warrior, training with his sword, spear, and javelin. Saul had trained, but he knew that he had been prepared to lead and not to fight. And so, as best as he was able, Saul prepared David to face Goliath the ways that he knew. He gave him his own layers of armor, his helmet, and his sword. But they didn’t fit David, he hadn’t trained to use them, and was unaccustomed to how they felt. And so, instead, David prepared the way that he knew. He took off the armor, set aside the helmet and sword, picked up his shepherd’s staff, and selected five stones (which were probably just a bit smaller than baseballs) that he knew would be suitable for spinning and throwing with his sling.

Of course, David won. But there was more to his accomplishment than preparation because there were others in Saul’s army that knew how to use a sling.

Jesus points to what made David different in Mark 4:35-41, where we hear this:

³⁵That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” ³⁶Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. ³⁷A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. ³⁸Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”

³⁹He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

⁴⁰He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

⁴¹They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

The fishermen were prepared. They had a boat, and they had years of experience, but… there was a squall, a particularly bad, and sudden, appearance of stormy weather. The thing that separated the fishermen from success was… faith.

But, as we consider our present situation and what it takes to share in the work of the Kingdom of God, to share our faith, to grow our church, and to share the good news of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul has a few more words of advice that we find in 2 Corinthians 6:1-13. Paul says…

^6:1 As God’s co-workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. ²For he says,

“In the time of my favor I heard you,
and in the day of salvation I helped you.”

I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.

³We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. ⁴Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; ⁵in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; ⁶in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; ⁷in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; ⁸through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; ⁹known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; ¹⁰sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

¹¹We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. ¹²We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. ¹³As a fair exchange—I speak as to my children—open wide your hearts also.

I have often said that the first rule of sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ is simply… don’t be a jerk. But Paul puts a finer point on it than that. He says that because God wants to save every single person on the planet, and because God is at work trying to rescue them, in all our encounters with the people around us we should “put no stumbling block in anyone’s path.” Which means, don’t do, or say, anything to the people around you that will make it harder for them to hear the message of Jesus Christ from you, of from anyone else today, tomorrow, or ten years from now. If you were trying to save someone from drowning, you would neither put rocks in their pockets, nor do anything to make them afraid of lifeguards or Coast Guard rescue swimmers. Even if you aren’t having any success, even if they favor a brand of politics you don’t like, or participate in a lifestyle with which you disagree, don’t do anything, or say anything, that might prevent them from hearing about Jesus from someone else. Secondly, Paul says, give freely of your affection and “open wide your hearts.” And that means to ask nicely, be kind, be friendly, be loving, and be polite.

It is good for us to read the Bible, study scripture, read books, come to Sunday school and church, learn how to share our faith, and build our confidence in doing so. But the reality is, and always has been, that “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Life is complicated, and no matter how much we prepare and plan, life doesn’t always happen the way that we had hoped. But beyond our planning and preparation, like David, we have faith that God has our backs to do the things that we can’t do and to plan for the things we cannot know. But we must also listen to Paul so that we are not the reason that someone stumbles and is unable to hear God calling them through the voices of others now, or in the future. Don’t be a jerk. Give love freely, ask nicely, be kind, be friendly, be loving, and be polite.

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Pentecost and the Politics of Pain

May 19, 2024 PastorPartridge Sermon adoption, Alliance, alone, Broadway, Christ, church, disciples, God, groaning, Holy Spirit, Jesus, John, love, Methodist, Ohio, pain, Partridge, Pentecost, Peter, politics, pray, prayer, spirit, Street, suffering, truth, United, weakness

Pentecost and the Politics of Pain

(Pentecost)

May 19, 2024*

By Pastor John Partridge

John 15:26-16:15 Acts 2:1-21 Romans 8:22-27

If you have any empathy at all and have watched the news at any time in the last several years, you just might despair for the state of our planet and its people. The United States is struggling with issues of race more than 150 years after the Civil War. South Africa continues to grapple with their racial issues thirty years after the end of Apartheid. Russia remains intent upon regaining control of Ukraine and other nations over which it once held sway during the years of the Soviet Union. Israel and Hamas continue to fight one another with far reaching calamity in an enormous city filled with civilians. Genocidal acts continue to be perpetrated against Christians and their churches in Nigeria. China continues to persecute ethnic minorities, Christians, and anyone else that might be perceived as a thread to the communist party. Venezuela’s political conflict has so utterly crashed its economy that people are said to be eating rats, pigeons, and dogs to survive. And, unfortunately, that’s just the beginning. The more we read about what is going on, the more we weep over the state of our planet.

But surely it will get better, right? Or maybe we’re just in a bad place at this present moment and it goes in some kind of cycle. And, while that might seem to be true locally, I don’t know that such a thing has ever been true when we look at the world as a whole unless, of course, we simply go back to a time when there weren’t many people at all, but even then life, and survival, was often simply brutal.

That’s a harsh assessment, but is there any good news?

Of course there is. But before we get to the good news, let’s look at the promise that Jesus made to his disciples after the resurrection but before his ascension into heaven. For that, let’s begin with Jesus’ own words carried to us by the Apostle John in John 15:26-16:15, where Jesus says:

²⁶“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. ²⁷And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.

^16:1 “All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. ²They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. ³They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. ⁴I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you, ⁵but now I am going to him who sent me. None of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ ⁶Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things. ⁷But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. ⁸When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: ⁹about sin, because people do not believe in me; ¹⁰about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; ¹¹and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

¹²“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. ¹³But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. ¹⁴He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. ¹⁵All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”

Jesus foretells of his return to heaven but promises that when he goes, he will send the Spirit of God, the Advocate, to earth in his place. The Advocate, Jesus says, will prove to the world that they were wrong about sin and righteousness, and wrong about judgement. The Spirit will also guide the followers of Jesus toward the truth. That doesn’t mean that Christians will have any sort of monopoly on truth, but that, over time, as we follow him, we will move away from falsehood and closer to the truth.

These are important promises, not only because our world seems to be broken and we need to have some good news, but because both individually and collectively we find that its far too easy to wander into half-truths, falsehood, fake news, propaganda, and delusion and we need help to stay focused and guided toward the truth. But as important as Jesus’ promise was, perhaps even more important is the fulfillment of that promise on the day of Pentecost that we see in Acts 2:1-21, which says:

^2:1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. ²Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. ³They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tonguesas the Spirit enabled them.

⁵Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. ⁶When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. ⁷Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome ¹¹(both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” ¹²Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

¹³Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

¹⁴Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. ¹⁵These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

¹⁷“‘In the last days, God says,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions,
    your old men will dream dreams.
¹⁸Even on my servants, both men and women,
    I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.
¹⁹I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below,
    blood and fire and billows of smoke. ²⁰The sun will be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
²¹And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Jesus returns to his home in heaven and, in fulfillment of his promise, sends the Spirit of God to earth and in a visible and unmistakable way, the Spirit arrives and enters into the disciples and other followers of Jesus Christ that were waiting for its arrival. Jews from all over the known world had gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate a Jewish holy day, and all of them heard the disciples preaching in their own unique languages and dialects.

This begins the fulfillment of the promise that Jesus made, but it is not the complete fulfillment. An undeniable miracle happens in full view of hundreds of unbelievers and the world sees that the power of God lives in the message of Jesus and the disciples. But has this proven the wrong of sin to the entire world? No. And has it guided them to the truth? Not everyone.

And what about the darkness and evil that we see throughout history and in the world in which we now live? It is obvious that pain and suffering and the politics that often perpetuate it haven’t gone away. And so, it’s fair to ask, “What role does the Spirit have in the world?” “What role does the church, and its members have?”, and “What does God expects of us?” We gain insight into these questions from the words of Paul in his letter to the church in Rome found in Romans 8:22-27 where he says:

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

²⁶In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

Paul openly admits that all of creation groans as if it were in labor and giving birth because of the pain, suffering, injustice, darkness, and evil that is in the world. In short, the world sucks. But amid that groaning of creation is the inward groaning and anticipation of our adoption, redemption, and a new life in God’s recreated and perfect world that is yet to come. Although we live in a world that is suffering and broken, we have hope in what is yet to come. And as we wait patiently in hope, the Spirit of God helps us in all our weaknesses, all our shortcomings, all our faults, and all the places that we just… aren’t enough. Even when we are so frightened, frustrated, angry, confused, irritated, broken, hurt, suffering, or otherwise unable to find words to pray, the Spirit of God intercedes for us and interprets our groans, and the feelings of our hearts, puts words to them, and carries those prayers to the throne of God.

Despite the constant barrage of unwelcome news and the politics of pain, the good news of Pentecost is that God is with us, that God loves us, cares for us, intercedes for us, and even puts words to our prayers of groaning even when we can’t find words for ourselves. In a world full of suffering and pain, the clear message of scripture is filled with hope because it tells us that…

… we… are not… alone.

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A Tithe of Time

April 30, 2024 PastorPartridge Blogs Alliance, Broadway, Christ, church, commitment, evil, God, good, Jesus, John, Methodist, Ohio, Partridge, stewardship, Street, tenth, time, tithe, United

A Tithe of Time

May 2024

By Pastor John Partridge

What exactly is a “tithe?” It’s a church word that we sometimes use withing the community of faith, but which rarely gets used anywhere else. Strictly speaking, a tithe means “a tenth.” In the Bible, Israel was called to give God one tenth of what they had earned and that tenth supported the temple, the full-time priesthood, and some additional funds for widows, orphans, and other charitable needs of the community. Tithes were commanded and expected, though this is one of the very few, and perhaps the only, command God gave to Israel that has no punishment for failing to comply. But it is also the only place that God challenges us to test him, saying, “Test me in this and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” (Malachi 3:10). Incidentally, gifts that went beyond ten percent, are what were called “offerings” to God.

But what money isn’t the only thing that we can tithe because money isn’t the only thing that God gives to us. Of course, money is one of the easiest things to quantify, that is to count, but our net worth, or our gross (not net) annual income is not the only gift that we get from God. Of course, we no longer sacrifice children, and we aren’t expected to give God our firstborn to serve the church, but what about time? God give us time and the time that we have is certainly a gift, so why don’t we think about giving our time back to God? If we dare to think about it that way, a tithe of our time is a lot. A tithe of our time would be giving one day in ten to God. Or even if we thought of it in terms of workdays, that’s one eight-hour day every two weeks. Then again, giving a tenth of our time to God wouldn’t necessarily mean working at the church for eight hours twice a month. It could look like something else.

It might look like sabbath rest. God invites us to rest from our labor once every seven days, to relax and restore us physically, mentally, and spiritually. In that way, we could give a part of our tithe to God just by showing up to church once per week, but also by not filling up the rest of our day with stuff that isn’t restful or that doesn’t honor God. It might be joining a Bible study, a Sunday school class, choir, volunteering for a committee or a work project, or something else in the life of the church.

It might look like an occasional mission trip, or volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, or in Scouting, the homeless shelter, community food pantry, the Alliance of Churches bread ministry, or other places where we can serve God by serving others whether that involves physical labor, or visiting folks in the hospital, writing cards to shut-ins, or answering phones at a suicide hotline.

You are allowed to use your imagination. But if God has given us gifts of time, talents, skills, and abilities, as well as intelligence, education, and money, how will we give back a tenth of what he has given to us?

Blessings,

Pastor John

Ownership. Relationship. Commitment.

April 28, 2024 PastorPartridge Sermon action, Alliance, Broadway, Christ, church, commitment, evil, God, good, Jesus, John, love, Methodist, Ohio, ownership, Partridge, Peter, relationship, share the story, shepherd, Street, United, witness

Ownership. Relationship. Commitment.

April 28, 2024*

By Pastor John Partridge

John 10:11-18 Acts 4:5-12 1 John 3:16-24

Have you ever driven a rental car? You can never be too sure about rental cars because, although they are usually new, people often drive them in ways that you would not drive your family car. I’ve heard stories about rental cars being destroyed because there are often no repercussions if you pay for the insurance in advance. Military vehicles are often in a comparable situation, although destroying them is punishable, it is not all uncommon for young soldiers to take vehicles off-road, bury them to the axles in mud, or worse, and just generally drive them… shall we say… harshly. Though in some cases, the motor sergeant is going to own you for a while.

There is a saying, “Drive it like you stole it” that might be applied to both rental cars and military vehicles. At the heart of this discussion is the issue of ownership. Ownership of the car makes a difference. If those same young soldiers spent several years working at the local fast food franchise to buy their own car, and then did a lot of their own labor to fix it up and add after-factory accessories and bling to it, the odds are good that they would drive that car in a vastly different way than a rental car or military motor pool vehicle.

Ownership makes a difference in many things. And it is that principle that we find at the core of our story this morning in John 10:11-18 when Jesus says…

¹¹“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹²The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So, when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. ¹³The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

¹⁴“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— ¹⁵just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. ¹⁶I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. ¹⁷The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. ¹⁸No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”

Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd” and not a hired hand. The difference between the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep, and the hired hand who runs away and allows the flock to be scattered, is ownership. The flock belongs to Jesus, and not only does he protect it and preserve it with his life, but he has a relationship with his sheep. He knows everything about his sheep, and they know him. And because they know him, and they trust him, they listen to his voice and follow his commands. And that illustration is accurate. Before we went into ministry, Patti and I had seven acres and, at one time, two sheep. Every day I let them out of the barn in the morning and they ran out to the pasture to graze. But every evening I opened the door to their stall, and then the barn door, and as soon as I called them, they ran in. If it was anybody but Patti or I, they didn’t come because they didn’t know them.

Ownership, and relationships, make a difference.

And so, when Peter and John are detained, if not arrested, and brought before the elders to make an accounting for the lame man that they healed at the temple gate, they don’t take the credit for anything, but instead point to the good shepherd. Let’s read the story in Acts 4:5-12:

⁵The next day the rulers, the elders and the teachers of the law met in Jerusalem. ⁶Annas the high priest was there, and so were Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and others of the high priest’s family. ⁷They had Peter and John brought before them and began to question them: “By what power or what name did you do this?”

⁸Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: “Rulers and elders of the people! ⁹If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed, ¹⁰then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. ¹¹Jesus is

“‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’

¹²Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

Peter and John knew the good shepherd and had a relationship with him. And so, as his followers, or as John Bunyan said it in Pilgrim’s Progress, as under-shepherds, they knew from where their authority and power had come and gave credit and testimony to Jesus for the healing of the lame man who had begged at the gate to the temple.

But why? And why does knowing why matter to us? And how does knowing inform us, and instruct us, about how we should live our lives today? The Apostle John understood that these are legitimate questions, and they were questions that the church was asking two thousand years ago just as we ask them today. And that’s why we find John’s answer to the first century church, and to us, in 1 John 3:16-24, when he explains that…

¹⁶This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. ¹⁷If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? ¹⁸Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

¹⁹This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: ²⁰If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. ²¹Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God ²²and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. ²³And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. ²⁴The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

Jesus said that he was the good shepherd, because the shepherd has ownership of his sheep, and is willing to lay down his life to protect them. Jesus did just that. He laid down his life so that we could be rescued from sin and death. Building on that, John makes the point that if Jesus laid down his life for us, then we should be ready to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If the followers of Jesus Christ are blessed enough to have money, cars, houses, and other material possessions, and have no pity for brothers and sisters that are in need, then how can we believe that the love of God is in them at all? Love, John says, isn’t about the words that we say, but in the actions that we take. Love isn’t saying that we care about the poor, or giving speeches about how much we love them. Love is making sure that they have food, clothing, and a place to live.

John says that “the one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.” If we love God, if the Spirit of God truly lives in us, then we will keep God’s commandments, do the things that God asks us to do, and love the people around us in the way that Jesus loved them. The abridged version is that if we truly believe, then we will use what we have, to take action and love the people around us by caring for their needs.

Jesus is the good shepherd. He has ownership and is not a hired hand, so he was willing to lay down his life for his sheep. But a good shepherd also has a relationship with their sheep. He knows them, and they know him. And because we have a relationship with Jesus, as our good shepherd, we have made a commitment to follow him, to obey him, and to love the world the way that Jesus loved.

Love is not words; love is an action.

How will you show the people of your community the love of Jesus today?

That is a question we should ask ourselves every day, and every time we see people who are struggling.

How will we show them the love of Jesus today?

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Hope for the World

April 21, 2024 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Broadway, Christ, church, Easter, evil, God, hopeless, hopelessness, Jesus, Methodist, Ohio, Partridge, peace, resurrection, share, share the story, story, Street, suffering, United, witness

Hope for the World

April 21, 2024*

By Pastor John Partridge

Luke 24:36b-48 Acts 3:12-19 1 John 3:1-7

The question that we asked last week was “What comes next?” And we asked what we were supposed to do with what we had learned from the stories that we read during Lent and about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ at Easter. And although we looked at some examples of what the disciples did, and, I hope, better understood what God commands us to do with the story of the resurrection and the message of the gospel, there is another question that was left unanswered. And the unanswered question is… why.

Why does God call us to share the good news of Jesus Christ? Why are we supposed to share our stories and the stories of scripture? Why are we commanded to inconvenience ourselves by having uncomfortable conversations about eternity with our friends, family, and people everywhere?

And so that’s the question that we’re going to dig into this morning, but, to do that, we are going to start in the same place that we started last week, and with the same story, but this time reading from the gospel of Luke, instead of the gospel of John that we read last week. We begin with what should be a familiar story in Luke 24:36b-48, which says…

³⁶While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

³⁷They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. ³⁸He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? ³⁹Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

⁴⁰When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. ⁴¹And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” ⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³and he took it and ate it in their presence.

⁴⁴He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”

⁴⁵Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. ⁴⁶He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things.

Just like we heard last week, Jesus begins his time with the disciples by saying “Peace be with you” just because, knowing full-well that Jesus was dead, seeing him appear in the middle of the room scared the dickens out of them and everyone thought that he must be a ghost. But Jesus calms them down, allows them to touch him to understand that he is both alive and solid, and even eats in their presence because, I suppose, logically, dead guys and ghosts don’t eat. But then Jesus gets to the important stuff and reminds them that what they have seen in his death and resurrection is nothing less than the fulfillment of dozens of ancient prophecies that they had all read in the Law of Moses, in the writing of the prophets, and in the Psalms. Jesus connected the dots between what they knew about the scriptures, the promised Messiah, and what they had seen in Jesus so that they understood that he was indeed the Messiah that Israel had been promised.

And then Jesus answers the “so what” question. Jesus says that the next step that must come, the next thing that must happen after the arrival of the Messiah, is that people need to repent and be forgiven of their sins, and the good news must be preached to all the nations of the world. In addition, having said that, Jesus declares that the disciples, and the other followers that were there, are witnesses of what had happened. The clear implication is that Jesus is commanding them to go and preach to the nations of the world because they were the people who had witnessed what had happened.

And so, the disciples begin to do exactly that. They are transformed from being scared men and women who meet in private behind closed doors and start to preach the message of Jesus Christ in public places and even in the Temple itself in full view of the priests, Pharisees, Sadducees, and the soldiers of the Roman Tenth Legion. In Acts 3:12-19, Peter heals a lame man whom everyone had seen begging at the gates of the temple, brings him into the temple courts, and everyone crowded around them asking questions and trying to understand what had happened.

¹¹While the man held on to Peter and John, all the people were astonished and came running to them in the place called Solomon’s Colonnade. ¹²When Peter saw this, he said to them: “Fellow Israelites, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? ¹³The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. ¹⁴You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. ¹⁵You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. ¹⁶By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see.

¹⁷“Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. ¹⁸But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. ¹⁹Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, ²⁰and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus.

And it is here that Peter says exactly those things that Jesus commanded them to say, that they were witnesses, that Jesus died, that God raised him from the dead, and that by repenting, turning to God, and putting our faith in Jesus, our sins are forgiven, wiped out, and erased as if they never happened so that we can rest and be refreshed in the presence of God.

But that still doesn’t answer the question of why. So far, what we’ve seen isn’t much different than what we saw last week. Jesus sends the disciples out, they go out, they perform miracles, and they preach because they were the people who had witnessed Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection. But how does that connect to us, and why are we called to share what we know if we weren’t the people who witnessed these events firsthand? And we hear the answer in the letter of 1 John 3:1-7, which was written, by the Apostle John, to the churches of in the Roman province of Asia between the years 85 and 95 AD as he says…

^3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ²Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears,^[^a^] we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. ³All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

⁴Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. ⁵But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. ⁶No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

⁷Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.

John says that even if we weren’t there to see it all unfold firsthand, we have still experienced the loved of God in a lavish and extraordinary way as we have been adopted into God’s family and declared to be the children of God. But John reminds us that not everyone knows the love of God or has experienced the lavish gift of adoption into God’s family. And because others have not heard the Good News, have not been adopted, and have not experienced the lavish love of God, they live without hope.

Let me say that again and let it sink in, all who have this hope in him, purify themselves just as Christ is pure. But the people who haven’t heard the Good News live without hope. We live in a world that is filled with sadness, darkness, hopelessness, and despair. Imagine watching the evening news, reading your newspaper or your morning internet news feed, seeing all of the death, destruction, warfare, violence, bloodshed, greed, suffering, corruption, and outright evil splashed across your screens and into your eyeballs every day without a shred of hope that it will ever get better, without hope that there is a better day coming, without hope that there is a God who cares, without hope that there will ever be justice for the poor and the oppressed, and without hope that there is anything at all beyond the veil of death. That is the reality for all those who have not heard and understood the message of Jesus Christ.

And that’s the answer to the question of why God has called us to share the story of the gospel, of Easter, and the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The answer to why, is simply because each of you, each of us, is the last guardian, the last bastion… of hope.

What kind of human being would watch a child drown when they only had to reach out their hand to save them?

But we live in a world full of people who are drowning in hopelessness.

And we are called to reach out our hands… and share the hope that we have.

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Share the Story. Do the Stuff.

April 14, 2024 PastorPartridge Sermon actions, Alliance, behavior, Broadway, Christ, church, disciples, do the stuff, Easter, God, Jesus, Methodist, mission, Ohio, Partridge, resurrection, share, share the story, story, Street, United

Share the Story. Do the Stuff.

April 14, 2024*

By Pastor John Partridge

John 20:19-31 Acts 4:32-35 1 John 1:1 – 2:2

Well… You’ve probably noticed that Easter is over. It’s a little weird because in the church there is this big build up to Christmas and Easter, and at least with Christmas, we can argue that December 25^th is only the beginning of the 12 days of Christmas, and the official season of Christmas lasts for quite a while after that. But we prepare for Easter through the season of Lent, have a big celebration on Easter Sunday, and then…. …nothing. I’m not suggesting that our United Women in Faith Sunday wasn’t great, but, as it relates to Easter, we’re still left with the question of “What’s next?” In seminary, my preaching professor said that the end of every sermon should answer the question “So what?” And, as big as Easter is, now that it’s over, we’re left with the same question… “So what?” Now that we’ve celebrated, what does it mean? How does this inform our lives? What should we do next?

And, as if often the case, we can find the answer to our questions by looking at the example of scripture, the example of Jesus, and especially the example of the disciples. What did the disciples do after the resurrection? And what did the other rank and file, nameless, ordinary followers of Jesus do? To find out, let’s rejoin the disciples about where we left them on Easter Sunday and then check out some snapshots in time to see what they did with what they had learned. We begin with the story of John 20:19-31, where we hear this:

¹⁹On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

²¹Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” ²²And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

²⁴Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. ²⁵So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

²⁶A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” ²⁷Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

²⁸Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

²⁹Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

³⁰Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. ³¹But these are written that you may believethat Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

As I mentioned on Easter Sunday, we find the disciples living in fear, meeting together with the doors locked because they were afraid that with Jesus dead, the same influential people that arranged a kangaroo court with false charges against Jesus would be emboldened by their success and come after the disciples next. And as they met together, their fear changed to joy when Jesus suddenly appears among them. But even now, the disciples do not completely understand. The ones who see Jesus firsthand are joyful, but Thomas, who wasn’t there, was openly skeptical, as many of us would be, and as many of our friends still are. Our life experience tells us that death is permanent and without firsthand evidence, without seeing Jesus personally, and physically verifying that it wasn’t some kind of imposter, Thomas wouldn’t believe. I would assume that Thomas wanted to believe that this was true but coming back from the dead seemed like a bridge too far.

But even though the disciples were overjoyed that Jesus had risen from the dead, and even after Jesus appeared to the disciples a second time, the disciples still didn’t understand what it all meant or what they were supposed to do even though Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” It wasn’t until they had gone back to their fishing boats, returned to their jobs, and tried to resume their normal, pre-Jesus, lives, that Jesus appeared to them yet again, and called them into his service and his mission… again, that they finally understood what the resurrection meant and how they were supposed live their lives. We see the difference that it made as we read the story in Acts 4:32-35 and see how their behavior has changed:

³²All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. ³³With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all ³⁴that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales ³⁵and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

By the time that we see these same disciples in the book of Acts, once they completely understood the meaning of the resurrection, the impact, and the lessons, of Jesus had changed their lives. Now, because of the grace of God that was within them, rather than scrabbling out an existence as individuals, the followers of Jesus have, at least partially, begun to live communally so that the poorest among them would have food to eat and a place to live. Although they legally owned individual property, they did not claim it as their own within the community of faith. Instead, they maintained their individual property for the best outcome for all rather than the best outcome for them individually. But this was not the only change that they had made in their lives. Where before we saw men who attempted to go back to their previous lives fishing in the Sea of Galilee, now the disciples dedicate themselves to sharing the message of the gospel and telling the world about the resurrection of Jesus.

But what else? How does that trickle down to the church of the twenty-first century and ordinary people like us? And we find a satisfactory answer to those questions in 1 John 1:1 – 2:2 as John explains how the community of Jesus followers were living their lives in the first century:

^1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. ²The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. ³We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. ⁴We write this to make ourjoy complete.

⁵This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. ⁷But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

⁸If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. ⁹If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

^2:1 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. ²He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

John says that because they heard the good news, saw Jesus with their own eyes, and touched his hands with their own fingers they now spent their lives telling the world about the message that Jesus shared. Their mission was to tell others about Jesus so that they could also believe and join the growing collection of followers that would eventually become known as the church. But following Jesus, and being in fellowship with other believers, meant something about how they lived their lives. If they said that they believed, but acted in ways that were contrary to the teaching of Jesus, then their entire lives became a lie. John says that if we follow Jesus, then we must live in the light, and live the kind of life that Jesus taught.

Likewise, because of what we know about the sacrifice of Jesus, we cannot pretend that we are perfect and without sin because that too is a lie. Instead, we recognize our flaws, failures, and sin, confess them to Jesus, and trust that he will forgive us and purify us from our unrighteousness. Any time that we claim to be better that we are, we make Jesus out to be a liar and the people around us cannot find him in us. John says that we do all that we can to live without sinning, but since we aren’t perfect, then we know that we eventually will. And so, whenever we fall into sin, we must remember that Jesus sacrificed himself so that we, and the entire world, could be forgiven of our sin.

So now, we end where we began, with these questions: “So what?” Now that we’ve celebrated, what does it mean? How does this inform our lives? What should we do next?

And the answer that we have found in the example, and in the words, of the disciples and the followers of Jesus in the first century is to tell the story, to share what we have, and to live the way that Jesus lived and the way that Jesus taught.

Simply put, Share the story… and do the stuff.

Easy to say, and sometimes hard to do, but that is our mission… and our life.

Share the story… do the stuff.

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From Fearful to Fearless

March 31, 2024 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Broadway, Christ, church, Easter, fear, fearful, fearless, God, Jesus, Methodist, Ohio, Partridge, Street, transformation, United

From Fearful to Fearless

March 31, 2024*

(Easter Sunday)

By Pastor John Partridge

Mark 16:1-8 Acts 10:34-43 I Corinthians 15:1-11

Have you ever had an experience that changed the rest of your life? It may have been something that happened in a moment, like almost falling off a cliff while hiking, or something that happened over days, months, or years, like attending college, or joining the military and going through boot camp. Moving away to college forced me to be more independent and self-sufficient and joining the Ada model railroad club during college taught me that my opinion, and my contribution, was valuable even if I was “only” a student and the rest of the club were much older. Being in the military changed my perspectives about a lot of things like the perspective to problem solving learned on the confidence course, and the understanding that I gained from visiting Honduras and seeing real, grinding, third-world poverty for the first time. Getting married, buying our first home, then having children, all changed me in different ways. All of us have had experiences like these. Some positive, like those I’ve mentioned, but other, profoundly negative experiences, like experiencing violence, can exact similar changes to who we are, how we react, and how we see the world.

And when we look at the story of Easter from this perspective, both positive and negative, we can see that the experiences of the disciples and the other followers of Jesus were profoundly transformational. The people that we grew to know in the gospel stories prior to Jesus’s resurrection, are suddenly not the same people that we meet afterwards. One of the common themes that we see in Jesus’ friends and followers, particularly after the crucifixion and before the resurrection… is fear. We are told of the disciples meeting, at night, in a house with all the doors locked and the windows barred… because they were afraid that soldiers were coming for them next. And we hear a similar fear resonating in the story of the women who went to the grave on Sunday morning to care for Jesus’ body in Mark 16:1-8, where it says:

^16:1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. ²Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb ³and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”

⁴But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. ⁵As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

⁶“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. ⁷But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

⁸Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

It is important to notice that, at this point, the female followers of Jesus, these key and core women who have been nearly everywhere that the twelve disciples have been, have been told by an angelic visitor that Jesus as risen from the grave and is going to meet the disciples, and Peter, in Galilee. It is likely that Peter is singled out because, due to his grief and guilt from denying Jesus three times, has given up, abandoned the other disciples, gone home, and at this time is intent upon a return to fishing as a career. And so, as the women seek out the disciples, despite being told that Jesus is alive, remain bewildered, confused, and afraid.

As I noted earlier, this fear persists for some time. The disciples meet in secret, after dark, in a house with doors and windows locked because they are afraid. Many of them return to their fishing boats until Jesus meets them there and calls them to ministry a second time, almost repeating their original call stories. We see the men who unknowingly walked with Jesus to Emmaus invite him to stay with them because they feared the dangers of being out on the roads and footpaths after dark.

But once it all soaked in, once they had seen Jesus several times, once they really understood and accepted that Jesus was alive, something about the resurrection completely and utterly changed the people who had seen it and experienced it. Because the Peter that we meet in Acts 10:34-43 is not the fearful man who had given up and went home to his fishing boat or who met at night in secret. Instead, here, we find Peter boldly standing in the temple courts, preaching the message of Jesus Christ, and daring the temple leadership, the guards, or the religious leaders to do anything about it. And as Luke tells the story, we hear this:

³⁴Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism ³⁵but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. ³⁶You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. ³⁷You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached— ³⁸how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.

³⁹“We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, ⁴⁰but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. ⁴¹He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. ⁴²He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. ⁴³All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

This, of course, is jumping ahead, but the point is that in the span of just a few days, the entire group of disciples, and all the followers of Jesus, both male and female, had a dramatic change in their personalities and in their behavior. If we didn’t know that the resurrection of Jesus had happened, we would still have to explain what happened to the disciples to cause such a transformational shift. We know, from our own experience, that trauma, education, and other experiences can change who we are, what we do, how we behave, and how we react to the situations and the people around us. But for such a dramatic change, from total fearfulness to boldly proclaiming the gospel and daring the authorities to do anything about it, demands that something dramatic, unusual, and amazing must have happened to transform, not just Peter, but the entire group of disciples and dozens of other Jesus followers.

If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then the complete transformation of the behavior of so many people becomes almost impossible to explain. What’s more, this transformation didn’t end with the disciples and the people who had met Jesus. As Paul explains in his first letter to the church in Corinth, this transformative power rippled throughout the community and across the Roman Empire, through anyone who would hear and believe the story of the gospel. We hear Paul’s words in I Corinthians 15:1-11 saying:

^15:1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. ²By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

³For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. ⁶After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

⁹For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. ¹¹Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

Paul reminds the church that after the resurrection, Jesus appeared to the disciples, and then to a gathering of five hundred believers, but also to James, and then to more people that Paul describes as apostles as a distinct group separate from the disciples, and then finally to Paul himself. But the transformation that we saw in the disciples continued because, by the time that Paul writes this letter, churches have already grown up across the Roman Empire including this one, in Corinth, in Greece, on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea and in Türkiye.

But that doesn’t make sense if the change in behavior that we saw in the disciples and the followers of Jesus is related to the trauma of witnessing Jesus’ death, or because they personally saw Jesus alive after he was crucified and buried, or if this change is connected to any other firsthand experience that involved the physical presence of the risen Jesus. According to Paul, the thing that was transformational was the story and the message of the gospel. The transformation didn’t just happen to the firsthand witnesses, it happened to anyone who heard the story and believed that it was true. Paul says that the transformational power that changed his life wasn’t in seeing Jesus firsthand, it was in the grace of God that inhabits everyone who believes. The power was never in the trauma of the experience, it was, and is, in the power of God that is transmitted from one person to another through the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that is contained in the gospel.

And that is why we still gather in worship, that is why we celebrate Lent and Easter, and that is why, two thousand years later, we still tell the story. Because the power that transformed the disciples from fearful to fearless, is found in the grace of God, and is the same power that transforms lives in our churches and in our communities today. The grace that lived in Paul lives on in you. The story lives in you. The power to transform lives is inside each one of us.

All we need to do to make it work, is to tell the story.

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Paradigm Proclamation

March 28, 2024 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Broadway, Christ, Christian, church, foot washing, God, Good Friday, Jesus, Last Supper, love, Methodist, Ohio, paradigm, Partridge, Passover, proclamation, standards, Street, United

Paradigm Proclamation

March 28, 2024*

(Holy Thursday)

By Pastor John Partridge

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14 John 13:1-17, 31b-35 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

As we gather for the celebration of Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday, we remember the story of the last supper but also the history of the people of Israel and the tradition that was likely being celebrated by Jesus and the disciples. If the meal that we know as the last supper was, in fact, the celebration of remembrance for the exodus of Israel from Egypt, none of the gospel writers explicitly say so. We can be sure that it was during the week of Passover because John’s gospel points to it being the day before the official Passover celebration. In any case, this is the reason that these two events are traditionally connected.

And so, tonight, as we read the scriptures that relate to these two events, I want to highlight a consistent theme that flows through all of them, and that theme, is the proclamation of God’s message through the way that his followers, in other words all of us gathered here, live their lives. We begin this evening with the story of Israel’s departure from Egypt and the beginning of their journey to freedom and we read that story in Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14:

^12:1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, ²“This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. ³Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lambfor his family, one for each household. ⁴If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. ¹¹This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover.

¹²“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. ¹³The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

¹⁴“This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance.

You will notice that God commands two groups of people, those in the time of Moses, and all the future descendants of that group of people. God declares that these are the instructions for the people, and then declares that this is a day that should be celebrated as a festival forever.

This is God’s paradigm proclamation in which God says that those who follow him should establish a new normal, and a new tradition, which shall be done both now and forever.

We see this again when Jesus meets with his disciples for what we now name as the last supper. We read that story in John’s gospel in John 13:1-17, 31b-35 where it says:

^13:1 It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

²The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. ³Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; ⁴so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. ⁵After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

⁶He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

⁷Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

⁸“No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

⁹“Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

¹⁰Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” ¹¹For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.

¹²When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. ¹³“You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. ¹⁴Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. ¹⁶Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. ¹⁷Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

³¹Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him. ³²If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.

³³“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.

³⁴“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Jesus declared, in the setting of the last supper, another paradigm proclamation that all who would follow him should do, and remember, forever. The first of these is foot-washing. Most churches, including ours, see this as a figurative command that we should serve the people that we lead, the people that work alongside, and the people around us. But some churches, such as our brethren friends, periodically celebrate a literal foot-washing service at church because they understand this command to be both literal and figurative. In either case, service to others, especially service to those under your authority, is something that Christians should do as a matter of habit and have in mind, and live out by example, regularly and perpetually.

The second of these is to love one another. The love that the followers of Jesus Christ have for the people in their church, in their communities, and all the people around them should be a mark of distinction. Christians aren’t called to simply be kind in the way that everyone in a culture is expected to be kind and polite to one another. Christians are called to be so loving that people who don’t know you would guess that you are a Christian because your love for others is so far above what is ordinarily seen. Folks, I have to say that that is certainly a high bar and a demanding standard, but that is exactly what Jesus expects us to do.

The third thing that came out of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples isn’t found directly in his words, but in those of Paul and are found in his first letter to the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, where he says:

²³For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, ²⁴and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁵In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” ²⁶For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Obviously, this is the one that you all expected me to talk about tonight. Although Jesus never specified that the last supper was to be a lasting ordinance or as a perpetual remembrance, it didn’t take long at all for the disciples and the followers of Jesus to decide that he had implied it and that they must remember it just as the people of Israel remembered the Passover.

These things that I have referred to this evening as “paradigm proclamations” are the things that God has called us to do conscientiously, regularly, and faithfully to remind us of who we are, to remember where we came from, to be the kind of people that God wants us to be, and to reveal God’s love to the world. The celebration of the Passover was something that marked Jewish believers and Jewish families as being Jewish. Likewise, if we are to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ, the people around us should know that we regularly celebrate communion when we meet together, that we serve the people that we lead and treat them like we would want to be treated, that we are committed to serving the others, and that our love is so distinctive, so… excessive, that we stand out from the ordinary kindness of our culture.

When we say that we are the followers of Jesus Christ, these are the things to which we have committed ourselves.

And, if we’re honest, we have work to do if we want to meet those high standards.

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Pastor Partridge

Sermons, blogs and other things from Pastor John Partridge

Street

Testing Love

Testing Love

June 30, 2024*

David’s Faith… in David

David’s Faith in… David

June 25, 2024

Pentecost and the Politics of Pain

Pentecost and the Politics of Pain

(Pentecost)

May 19, 2024*

A Tithe of Time

A Tithe of Time

May 2024

From Fearful to Fearless

From Fearful to Fearless

March 31, 2024*

(Easter Sunday)

Paradigm Proclamation

Paradigm Proclamation

March 28, 2024*

(Holy Thursday)