New Hope UMC of the Northern Berkshires

If you’re anything like me, you spend way too much of your time and your emotional energy worrying about the bad things you just know are on the horizon.

When is that bad phone call going to come?

When am I going to receive that frightening notice in the mail?

When is the doctor’s office going to call me back?

When is my boss going to call me into the office?

But Jesus wants us to focus on there here and now, and live our life, not in fear, but in abundance. What is going to come will come. But tomorrow’s uncertainty doesn’t have to cloud today’s joy.

This Sunday we celebrate All Saints Day, and we’ll have an opportunity to remember the saints in our lives who have gone on to glory during the past year.

While we celebrate the saints, we’ll remember the widow, who gave everything to God. Like the saints who sacrificed of themselves to build our Faith, collectively, and our faiths individually, the widow emptied herself sacrificially for God’s use in the world.

While we honor her gift, there's a question we should be asking ourselves.

Today’s scripture is one of the most significant moments in the ministry of Jesus. A Pharisee comes to him and asks him this question: Rabbi, what is the most important, the most significant, the most critical off all of the commandments?

If you’ve been around Christianity, you probably know Jesus’ answer: Love God, love your neighbor, love yourself.

But there’s something about the way he answers that might be surprising.

Join us Sunday morning to talk about these two most important commandments.

Gandhi is famously said to have said, “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” And this is unfortunately all too true sometimes.

Sometimes, the biggest thing standing between people and faith… is people OF faith.

Let’s talk about it, as we hear the story of Blind Bartimaeus, who faithful confession of Jesus as the Son of David was almost drowned out by the people of faith who followed the Son of David.

They tried… but the couldn’t stop what was coming… and, thankfully, neither can we.

I was listening to a theology podcast the other day. The show was hosted by an Episcopal theologian, and her guests on the show were a Presbyterian pastor and a seminary professor.

Now, I’ve been to seminary, and so when academic theologians start talking about eschatological underpinning to specific pericopes, and their effect on their understanding of soteriology, I get it. I even often find it interesting.

But I wasn’t alone when I was listening. There was someone else nearby, and when I asked that person for their response to the conversation, they gave the only reasonable answer.

“Huh?”

All of these discussions are interesting, if you’re a theology nerd.

But most of us aren’t theology nerds, and I gotta wonder… are we making following Christ too hard?

We work hard for what we have. Something drives us. Something pushes us forward. It’s not the same thing for each one of us, but there is something for each one of us.

So we work hard, and when we achieve our goals, whatever they may be, we celebrate, we congratulate ourselves. We offer praise… to ourselves. For our personal achievements.

And if we go too far, we can let those personal achievements, those self-congratulations, invade our hearts. We can let them take the place in our hearts that should belong to God alone.

What is it for you?

Pride? Greed? Desire?

Let’s talk about what we have to give up, if we are to follow Jesus.

Imagine this: you’re out, pretty much minding your own business, when you see someone slam violently into someone another man, knocking him to the ground, and falling on top of him as they struggle.

Pretty shocking! Until you remember you’re at a football game.

You see two people in each other’s faces, screaming, and one reaches back and slaps the other, as hard as she can.

Yikes! Well, until you remember you’re in a theater, and these are actors in the play you’re watching at the theater.

There are a lot of things we can see, or hear, or read, that seem to teach us, tell us, show us, one thing… until we step back and see them in context.

That’s true for everything. Maybe for scripture more than anything else.

Almost 20 months into this pandemic, so many things have changed. Our lives are different. Our work is different. The way we socialize is different. The way we travel is different.

The way we worship is different.

Many churches never stopped in-person worship. Many churches have resumed in person worship. Many remain virtual; many others, like ours, are now hybrid, in-person worship paired with a live stream that has some degree or capacity for interaction with remote participants.

In most cases, even when full live worship in-person has resumed, worship feels different. Looks different.

How many churches have stopped passing the collection plate? How many have stopped passing the peace during worship?

How many have stopped “coffee hour”?

For many of us, this isn’t what we grew up with. But that doesn’t make it bad. Just because something is the way we’ve always done it… doesn’t make it bad… or wrong. Sometimes, doing something different, out of the ordinary, new, not the way we’ve always done it is a blessing.

This morning we recognize that we don't always get it all right... and we ask the question: am I good enough?

This Sunday, as we commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we are reminded that the call of Christ is to love all people, to make no distinction on who is worthy of God’s love, and, therefore, the love we reflect on others in Christ’s name.

But it’s hard. We are not necessarily pre-disposed to love everyone.

Yet, we can learn, and we can grow. Even Jesus needed a reminder.