SERMON | Matthew 5:13-20 | "The Kingdom of God: The Matter of the Heart" by Rev. Joseph Sanford at Grace United Methodist Church in Franklin, Indiana

If our hearts are not right, we will not live into this God-willed way of relationship with one another.

If you degrade a person’s humanity AT ALL…you’re living counter to God’s will and way.

If you think a person is less-deserving of love and grace than yourself, you are living counter to what God intends.

If you view a person as an object…as a means to your own end…then you are on the path of darkness, not light.

We are all guilty of doing this to other people.

There’s a reason Jesus spends so much time talking about it.

Thinking about what we do or don’t say to them…

Or what we do or don’t do…

…is just a matter of limiting our darkness.

Jesus will spend the rest of this sermon revealing that God is after our hearts.

How we posture ourselves toward other people is crucial.

When our hearts are not in-line with God’s intended purpose for us…

When we are NOT fulfilling the law…

Our actions WILL NOT be good fruit.

But if our hearts ARE in-line with God’s intended purpose…

If we ARE fulfilling the law…

Our actions WILL BE good fruit.

We don’t need to focus on what we are doing on the outside, whether we’re following rules are able to stop ourselves just short of some sort of human-crafted limitation…

We need to focus on getting our hearts right so that we can KNOW how we respond to the world is what God intended for us as the salt of the earth and light of the world.

Entering the Kingdom is not about following rules.

Entering the Kingdom is a matter of the heart.

Saying, “Yes” to God and following Jesus and entrusting ourselves to the Holy Spirit’s leading is us making a commitment to being healed from the inside out.

We start in the heart…and the rest will naturally follow.

It’s strange how we so often turn this whole effort into an outside-in process in our heads, isn’t it?

If we follow the right rules…dress the right way…use the right words…somehow that makes us worthy.

That’s the way of scribes and pharisees, friends!

As individuals, we will find life when we begin surrendering our will to God.

When we desire what God desires…

When we see people as God sees them…

When our hearts break for the things that break God’s heart…

As a church, we will find life when we surrender our mission and vision to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

When we stop worrying about what songs we sing…

When we stop worrying about how this space is decorated…

When we stop living by “that’s how we’ve always done it”…

When we stop filtering who can enter into our doors…

When we, instead, take time to quietly pray and commune together…

When we take time to share a meal and conversation…

When we hear each other’s hearts and stories…

The Holy Spirit has been at work in this church for over 200 years.

The Holy Spirit is every bit as active today as ever!!

We need only take some time to consider what might be keeping up from being the salt of the earth and light of the world.

We need only take time to notice where maybe we’ve brought other type of seasoning into the mix…perhaps some wonderful traditions of the past have simply lost saltiness—because they served a purpose for THAT place and time more than they serve a purpose for THIS place and time.

So much of ministry is about taking time to pay attention…

So much of being a witness for God is showing up—coming out from underneath the bushel basket so that the love, grace, mercy, compassion, and truth can be more on display.

When we stay true to our calling making sure our collective heart is right, then what we do and how we do it will naturally bear good fruit for the Kingdom of God.

We’ll be a place where our acts of service are pleasing to God…

Where our very being is a light of hope for those in our community who lack it.

We’ll become the Kingdom people God is calling us to be…

And, friends, there’s nothing better than Kingdom-living.

SERMON | Matthew 5:1-12 | "The Kingdom of God: For Anyone on the Right Path" by Rev. Joseph Sanford at Grace United Methodist Church in Franklin, Indiana

Living more and more into the Kingdom of God means living less and less in every other kingdom.

Those who are allegiant to other kingdoms will see you as a traitor…as un-allegiant.

Experiencing this kind of response from disciples of other kingdoms should encourage us to know that we are actually becoming less allegiant to other kingdoms and, therefore, more allegiant to God’s Kingdom.

People telling us we are not acting other-kingdom enough should be a joy to us.

And when people go from just telling you to actively working against you…

Spreading rumors…

Attacking you verbally or even physically…

Making life harder for you…

You can have joy in your heart that you are walking the path of God’s messengers.

This is how Jesus begins his sermon.

This is the character of God’s will…God’s Reign…God’s Kingdom among us.

This Kingdom of God among us doesn’t look like other kingdoms EVEN WHEN those other kingdoms claim to belong to God.

You can misuse God’s name all you want in some vain effort to build up credibility and a sense of self-righteousness all you want…but it doesn’t take much to simply open your eyes—to pay attention to those who are poor in spirit…to those who mourn…to those who are gentle…to those who long for things to be fair, equitable, and just…to those who show mercy…who aren’t caught up in the wrong things…who live their lives bringing healing and wholeness.

Friends, if we want to be on the right path to the Kingdom of Heaven among us…we must first place our hope and trust in the Kingdom revealed by Jesus.

And just like the crowds around Jesus had to understand, let us understand… God’s blessing doesn’t look like what we define as blessing. They thought their high priests, great leaders, kings, governors, and Caesars were blessed by God to be in their positions.

Don’t be fooled by these “blessings” of the world.

God will not bring the world back to right through the people who are “blessed” in systems of corruption and terror.

Furthermore, to be on the right path in the Kingdom among us,

You don’t have to be a pastor…

You don’t have to have gone to church for years…

You don’t have to have read the Bible (although it certainly helps)…

You don’t have to have the answers—in fact, maybe poor in spirit starts with admitting we do NOT have all the answers.

Anyone can journey toward the Kingdom among us.

Anyone can seek to find the right path.

That’s why were here, friends.

To not only follow Jesus, but to embody the character of Jesus and the Kingdom of Heaven so that others may see a whole different kind of Kingdom…a different kind of reality…a different kind of character. (SET APART)

It’s so TEMPTING to respond to the world in kind.

It’s easy to become angry and cynical.

It’s easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment and say things about other human beings that are simply terrible things to say.

It’s easy to stoop down to the level of terrorizers and become terrorizers ourselves…

It’s easy to forget that all other people are human beings JUST…LIKE…US.

These different groups from Jesus day (Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Essenes) were only driving people apart and in conflict with each other—this is NOT the kingdom!!

The world has seen enough of other kingdoms—enough division. Haven’t we?

We’ve spent far too long living in other kingdoms.

Let’s follow Jesus…a trust his way of humility, grace, and love a little more today…

giving more of ourselves until we are able to give all of ourselves.

That by following Him, we may go from being hopeless to having hope

…to becoming hope.

It’s possible, friends, because Jesus can lead us there.

Do you believe in this hope?

Do you believe in him enough to follow?

Anyone can follow him.

Anyone can be on the right path.

…and this Good News is a blessing indeed.

SERMON | Matthew 4:12-23 | "The Kingdom Among Us" by Rev. Joseph Sanford at Grace United Methodist Church in Franklin, Indiana

The whole story of the Bible is about putting things back together as God had intended. All of Creation is meant to be connected and a giant collective where we all gain something EXTRA…a quality that is more than the sum of its parts.

There’s a phrase for this:

Kingdom of God.

Reign of God.

Heaven.

When things are connected as they should be and living into their intended purpose…they are in paradise…delight…heaven.

For centuries God had been trying to get the world back together as it should be through a family coming from Abraham and Sarah.

For years God’s people had been longing for this great promise of wholeness for all creation to be fulfilled.

And then Jesus shows up and announces, “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.”

The Kingdom of God is among us.

The great collective of humans and all creation is now among us, Jesus says.

Living here and now as things should be is accessible.

He’ll then spend the rest of this Gospel Account helping people to understand how to access it…how to live into it…how to embrace the way, the truth, and the life as God defines them.

All we need to do is repent and follow him.

Repent—we must reorient our lives away from what we think it’s all about right now and direct our steps toward the path of Jesus as he reveals the truth.

This doesn’t mean you need to leave your home, work, family, or whatever else.

The kingdom isn’t a place.

The kingdom isn’t even a particular point in time.

The kingdom is a reality of a particular quality and complexity into which we can live our every moment alongside of God and others.

We don’t have to fully understand it or know the rules or live into it perfectly right now because there’s no way we can.

Instead, we say “yes” to it.

We say “yes” to following Jesus as he shows us what the Kingdom is all about right here and now.

We say “yes” to the body of Christ, the church, where can explore this good news together with the very presence of God’s Holy Spirit who continues to speak to us and draw us into this wonderful reality already among us…

The Spirit connects us to the community and to God in such a way that we experience the quality of what the Kingdom brings us that is beyond the sum of the parts.

When we truly repent—when we reorient ourselves in God’s direction and choose to live beyond just ourselves—we can experience the reality of God’s presence in every aspect of our lives together.

Miracles happen all around us…if we but just lift our eyes from our every day worries and pinings…

If we but just drop the nets we are so focused on and have become so accustomed to that we’ve stopped considering something bigger.

What you have to offer your church family in this new season of ministry together is NEEDED by us all.

What each person in this congregation has to offer is EXACTLY what you need.

We are not here by accident.

We are here for such a time as this.

We are here to do what God has for us to do in this season.

We are here to follow Jesus, experience the Kingdom, and be the very vessel through which God can continue to bring the promise of all Creation and people being, once again, back into right relationship with one another…

That we can shine the light of the reality of the Kingdom into a world that is so fixated on all of the wrong things we have ceased to be connected and we have ceased to experience Life as it can be with God.

The Kingdom is here…

Now…

Among us.

We continue our look at this passage considering how the first meal post-Resurrection (of the new age) counters the first meal of the old age (Genesis 3) so that the eyes of humanity are opened to the reality of Resurrection and what it means.

We encounter Christ in scripture AND the table.

Let's consider all this meal has to offer us today.

Of course the Messiah had to suffer--according to all the scriptures about Jesus.

We will explore what Jesus meant as well as understand how this passage was used by the early church as a template for worship. Part one focuses on how we can be distracted and miss the point.

Sermon | Luke 24:1-12 | JITQ - 9. "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" by Rev. Dr. Jenothy Irvine at Grace United Methodist Church in Franklin, Indiana

We have heard about the foot washing, but have we understood its deep theological meaning? It's not about washing each other's feet unless that act is understood in its deeper context of the union Jesus is ushering in between humanity, himself, and God.

Let us consider this familiar text to understand exactly what Jesus did TO them.

Jesus chose a very particular way to enter Jerusalem and challenge the corruption of the systems at work (Rome, Judea, and the Temple). Of course he did! Who did we expect?

Sermon | Luke 9:18-27 | JESUS IS THE QUESTION - 6. "Who do you say I am?" by Rev. Dr. Jenothy Irvine at Grace United Methodist Church in Franklin, Indiana

A sermon about our responsibility in faith.