NOTICE TO ON-DEMAND WORSHIPPERS
In order to expedite posting the worship services here on our website, we are reducing the transcript to just the scriptures used and the message. Union Grove UMC in partnership with Southland Books & Cafe, began holding Second Sunday Community Church in January 2023. Second Sunday Community Church takes place at 3 p.m. ET the second Sunday of every month, meets in-person at The Bird & The Book, and is also live-streamed on Facebook. Holy Communion is offered at every Second Sunday service. If you are worshipping on Second Sundays online whether during the live-cast or through on-demand viewing, you are encouraged to have bread and juice or wine available as you watch the service and to participate in communion just as if you are present with us.
SCRIPTURE READINGS
God, open us to hear and receive your scriptures today as you would have us hear them, understand them as you would have us understand them, and to act upon them as you would have us act upon them.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
*Scriptures this morning are from the NRSV.
Scriptures for today are embedded in the message.
Message – Loosening the Bonds*
Rev. Val
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock, and my redeemer, and may you see fit to use me as a vessel from which you pour out your Divine Word.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
1 Peter 1:17-23 – If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile.
You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.
He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake.
Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.
Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.
You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.
Once again, the scriptures of God for the People of God. Thanks be to God.
Yesterday was a hard day here in the Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church as we ratified the decision of 264 churches to leave our denomination. People that have known each other for decades are now separated by that decision, a decision that has impacted clergy, laity, districts, and the Conference. A long-coming and stressful decision that, though finally made and ratified, has not necessarily eased the tension we’ve all felt for some time as the unknown future we’ve been facing on both sides of the decision remains to be seen.
That tension is compounded by the tension in our nation, our culture, our society as it, too, seems to be facing an insurmountable divide. Too many today are living in fear of an unknown future, some literally in fear for their lives, and the root cause of their fear is too often caused by certain religious beliefs that claim an authority from God.
That false claim has caused many to leave the church and many to often fear the church.
Rev. Stephen Paul Kliewer writes of this fear in a recent post: “It is all about fear
Seriously!
What is the fruit of fear?
When we are afraid we are separated from each other.
We cannot see each other as friends, collaborators, brothers and sisters.
We see them as threats
And when others are threats
We must dominate them
Control them
Intimidate them
The ideology of domination comes from fear, not strength
Fear, not a sense of “rightness”
Fear, not God
God says “Perfect love (my love) casts out all fear”
It is fear that causes right-wing politicians to use their power
To oppress and suppress
To punish
To minimize
To control
Authoritarian governments are born out of fear
It is fear that drives the gun-rights movement
Fear of those uppity people who should know their place
Fear of those who are different
Fear of progress
Fear
It was fear that caused an old man to shoot through the glass at an innocent teenager
It was fear, and the need to feel powerful, that caused a man to fire bullets
Into a car, killing a young person who just happened to be lost
It is fear that drives the American right to the polls to vote for a toxic narcissist
It is fear that causes many a preacher to push dominance and hate
It is a theology of fear that insists that if you don’t turn you will burn
And be in conscious eternal torment for eternity
It is fear of this same malign God of domination that lies behind
The rigidity and ideological myopia of the pro-life movement
(God will get you if you don’t watch out)
It is fear that drives racism and greed
That robs people of insight and compassion
That keeps them from being welcoming, generous, and kind
How many times do the angels show up
Saying “Do not be afraid”
Jesus tells the people, do not be afraid
God has the sparrows, God has you
Fear not, God is giving you the kingdom
And his last intimate conversation with his disciples begins
Do not let your hearts be troubled
It is interesting that those who live in fear
Want the rest of us to fear
And it works, doesn’t it?!
How many of us, watching the creep of fear-driven authoritarianism
Are afraid.
But still, the message comes
Be not afraid
Be not afraid
Be not afraid
“…for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (2 Tim)
God is
God is with us
God loves us
God has given us the power of love
Be not afraid
But use the power of love
Get up, Get going, Get doing,
And overcome evil with good.”
Howard Thurman wrote, “When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.”
And Rev. Kliewer again writes: “April struggles to be born
as spring stumbles awkwardly out of winter
April showers turn into days of summer heat
Only to be replaced again by winter
Today the snow falls
Budding trees are coated with white,
The eager crocuses are buried once again,
And the warming earth is once more blanketed with cold
What do we do with hope compromised?
When the faint stirrings of hope are crushed?
When the arc of history no longer seems to bend toward justice?
When love seems to be conquered by hate?
I can remember the nascent presence of hope
When my heart lifted
When it seemed as if we could, and would, make this world
A better place for all
And I entered the fray
Ready to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless
Ready to fight for equity and equality
Ready to insist on justice for all
I saw progress
A black President
A meager move toward universal healthcare
A new understanding of gender, and its complex and fluid spectrum
Advances in medicine
More tolerance and acceptance of diversity
But now
It feels as if all the evils of humankind have come rushing back in
Racism, authoritarianism,
Attacks on education
Guns, guns, and more guns
And with them shootings, and death
Children bleeding on the floors of our schools
Black legislators removed at the whim of white legislators,
Voting suppressed
Women marginalized
Minority populations oppressed and threatened
Liars are venerated, even worshipped,
While the rich get richer, and the poor poorer
And all of this being done in the light of day
Brashly, overtly
No apologizes, no holding back
And I am old
And tired
And without answers
I do not know what to do with the blind allegiance of many to a toxic creature
With the trust that is placed in untrustworthy people
With lies believed
With the worship of weapons of death (AR-15s)
With the racism, the hate
With the injustice, the cruelty
My carefully hoarded resources
of faith and hope
my trust that love does indeed win,
that the Kingdom of God is near
are quickly waning
and what I am left with
is trust
I must in these times
believe in the power of Love
I must learn to lean
To trust in the One who can bring life out of death
It is no easier for me to trust
And to understand
Then it was for those disciples, who wandered
Bewildered from the graveyard on Easter morning
but this is the time
to not just trust
but to live out that trust
to move beyond reliance on our own capacities
to a reliance upon that power
that is within
that power that lies sleeping in all human creatures
in all creation
it is time to wake up
and let Love’s full giving
begin
so that we do not grow tired of doing good
and do not give up! (Galatians 6)”
And, lastly, in Hymn For The Hurting, Amanda Gorman writes, “Everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed and strange,
Minds made muddied and mute.
We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.
And yet none of it is new;
We knew it as home,
As horror,
As heritage.
Even our children
Cannot be children,
Cannot be.
Everything hurts.
It’s a hard time to be alive,
And even harder to stay that way.
We’re burdened to live out these days,
While at the same time, blessed to outlive them.
This alarm is how we know
We must be altered —
That we must differ or die,
That we must triumph or try.
Thus while hate cannot be terminated,
It can be transformed
Into a love that lets us live.
May we not just grieve, but give:
May we not just ache, but act;
May our signed right to bear arms
Never blind our sight from shared harm;
May we choose our children over chaos.
May another innocent never be lost.
Maybe everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed & strange.
But only when everything hurts
May everything change.”
May everything change. It seems like everything changes on a moment by moment basis these days. But that’s not the kind of trust, hope, and change these poets and prophets write of.
The psalmist who wrote Psalm 116 tells us that our bonds have been loosed. Peter says that we were ransomed from the futile ways of our ancestors. Salvation is a given, they seem to be arguing. It is a gift and was done by God’s action, not ours. Specifically, Peter says, through the precious blood of Christ. This means that our emphasis is not on how to get saved, at least this week, but rather, for what are we saved. What will we do with this freedom that has been given to us?
Granted, we could also spend some time talking about what we are saved from. What is this futility that Peter speaks of, for example? What are the snares of death that the psalmist mentions in Psalm 116? And is the salvation of Psalm 116 the same as the salvation of I Peter 1? This would probably make a fascinating Bible study and is certainly worth considering for conversation and for deeper understanding. But is it the proclamation we want to make on this third Sunday of Easter? Is it the good news that needs to be given and heard on this day?
Maybe it is; maybe there are many of you who are seeking such information. The texts, however, focus not on the fact of being saved but on the result. What happens because our bonds have been loosed? What are we ransomed to do? Or perhaps better, not the result, but the response. That’s what we need to consider together. What is our response to being set free?
At the risk of being cliché, three responses seem to be called for in our texts for this week. Let’s start with remember. A part of our response to being set free is to remember what life was like before we experienced this freedom. The psalmist recites the journey, the state that caused the poet to call out the name of the Lord. This might seem relatively minor, and our inclination is often to say, “Let’s move on, look ahead, don’t spend time looking back. The whole looking back thing is what caused so much trouble for the Exodus journey. If they had learned to let the past be the past, then they could have got on with following God, and maybe it wouldn’t have taken them forty years!”
A good argument, to be sure—except what was happening in the wilderness wandering was not remembering but waxing nostalgic. They weren’t remembering what it was really like when they were slaves in Egypt; they were creating a false reality that sounded so much better than it really was. We often have that trouble with history; we want to view it through rose-colored glasses and think that it was some sort of golden age for everyone, when, in fact. it wasn’t.
The call to remember as a response to our salvation is a call to be honest about where we’ve been and where we’ve come from. It is also an opportunity to ask forgiveness, not just from the God who has showered us with grace, but from the people we have hurt, or neglected, or overlooked. It is an opportunity for us to embrace some humility and some empathy for those who don’t know yet what we know about being set free. We remember in order to keep our feet on the ground, to keep an honest perspective about who we are and how we are not really the authors of the good story our life is turning into. We remember so that we can embrace the other two responses to our freedom.
The response of the psalmist is perhaps the clearest. Because we remember that the Lord heard our cry and God loosed our bonds, we will praise. Praise is the second thing that we will do in response to our salvation. The end of Psalm 116 is an act of worship mingled with a way of living one’s life in all its power and grace and joy. There is exuberance in these verses that cannot be denied. It’s important to not skip over that joy. There is praise and there is praise. Too often, we give God praise because it is in the script (or the bulletin or projected on the screen) for us to do so. The psalmist goes to great lengths to offer this praise as a response to what has been done in the life of the one who sings the praise.
Another noteworthy element of praise is that it is both private and public. We too often individualize our response to God. We call it a private matter, just between me and God. Well, the scriptural witness is that faith and our response to God are never intended to be a private matter. In fact, the sign that our faith and devotion to God is real and true and deep in our lives is that we are willing and able and unrelentless in sharing our joy or offering our praise in the whole community of faith. There is a corporate component to our worship that is an essential element to the expression of faith. “Not neglecting to meet together,” says the writer of Hebrews (10:25) in calling us to be the body that we are called to be.
Both those churches that remained UMC and those that elected to leave the UMC remain under the same call … to be to follow Christ, to be His hands and feet, but to do so in new ways. The separation is much like the separation of conjoined twins. Related by birth, related by the body and blood shared at the communion table, but now living and operating independent of one another.
We, the congregation of Union Grove United Methodist Church, are already experienced at doing things in new ways. We take to heart our commitment to follow God and Christ. We embrace what David Hazard writes about meeting God:
today when you meet god
and you’re asked
do you like the flowers in my hair ?
that is an invitation to open
your eyes
and when you meet god later
winging past you
that is an invitation to open
your mind
then god will appear before you needing
shelter a shave a bath some money for food
that is an invitation to open
your heart and better still at that moment
your wallet
also you will meet god in a parent’s love
for their children
and that is an invitation to open
every doorway to god’s presence which is
love
when god comes to you
in the world’s beautiful creatures
that’s an invitation to open
your tight little ideology to a wider truth
and when god asks you
to come meet in prison
that’s an invitation to open
your courage and compassion
when you run into god everywhere
it’s an invitation to open
your soul
and let it be a sacred dwelling
a place where everyone can meet
god with you
god in you
stay and have a laugh a cry a party
and space to just be
Change is inevitable. As the songs say, “Change is gonna come,” and “The times, they are a changing.” But the change has to begin with us. More importantly, and as Chris Kratzer reminds us, “It all starts from the heart.
Truth does not come from the outside in, it is discovered from the inside out. Anyone can use anything to see and say what they want it to. It’s all a matter of the heart. Everything.
Nothing changes until our heart changes. And that change happens from within. The external can inform, but it does not transform.
We make emotional decisions first and then seek to spiritually justify them. We go inward and then seek to rationalize what’s inside as coming from the external in order to give it validity and authority. And sometimes, to give an excuse.
Sadly, this is how we have been indoctrinated. This is how we trick ourselves and others into becoming and doing what our Light within would never allow.
For, in truth, what we believe is who we are, it’s the reflection of our heart, not necessarily God’s. If I hate, it’s because my heart has decided to. I have chosen hate as a matter of my heart.
In fact, when we say, “the Bible says,” we actually have first decided what we say it says and then strive to align it as if it was the cause of our beliefs and not our own heart. As if it came from God and not ourselves.
This is why it is so important that a healthy spiritual journey spends far less time studying words on pages and much more time discovering, engaging, and studying the Light within, the lamp of our heart.
No one worships Jesus, we worship the Jesus of our heart. What’s in our heart is what we worship. What we see in our heart is what we then see in Jesus or any another religious object of faith. As we awaken to the heart. We awaken to all that is Divine.
So, if we haven’t found Jesus in the trees. If we haven’t encountered Him in a drag queen. If we haven’t seen Him in the evening sky. If we haven’t noticed Him in our reflection. If we haven’t seen Him in our enemies. If we haven’t discovered Him in other faiths. If we haven’t seen Him in the condemned. If we haven’t encountered Him in the disabled. Then we likely haven’t seen Jesus in the Bible either. Not because He’s not there, but because our heart isn’t.”
“Anything that tries to control you, conform you, or colonize you is not of Jesus.
Love does not insist on its own way.
If a human can travel in faith, mind, spirit, or will outside the scope and sanctuary of God, that god is not God.
Until Christianity becomes a faith that encourages and empowers free-thinking, free-believing, and free-living, it is a faith rooted in weakness, fear, and insecurity. Its center is not on Christ, but on power and control.
No one preaches hell, insists on the infallibility of the Bible, guilts people into compliance, and lifts their creeds above all others out of truly altruistic motives.
There is so such thing as unselfish evangelism.
Jesus pointed the disciples toward a mission of helping people to become “learners” of Jesus, not lorders of religiosity.
Big difference.”
As we’re reminded in a video I shared late last night, Christ is the Living Water. Standing water eventually becomes stagnant, but Living Water constantly moves, flowing, adapting to the path it follows, wearing away obstacles that try to encumber it. If you put your hand in a river one day, and then come back the next day and put your hand in the same place in the same river, you will not touch the same water. If you were to live long enough, you could put a sharp-edged stone into a river bed and watch as the flowing water eventually smoothed those jagged edges.
And that is the nature of Christ. While His love and His Way are the bedrock, the foundation of our faith, His Way teaches us how to continuously move forward with mercy, with justice, with grace, and most importantly, with radically fierce love.
And so, as we continue to look and move forward, we do so looking through the eyes of Christ, seeing Christ and God in each person we encounter, and embracing each person we encounter as a beloved Child of God, worthy, loved, and equal in every respect. We reject that marginalization of any of God’s children, and the doctrines of hate and hell.
On Christ, the solid rock, we stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.
Let’s pray:
Gracious God,
When we remember the journey of our faith, the story that we live with you and one another, we recall all the ways we have missed the mark.
We have failed to live our Christian story well.
We have neglected to listen to and believe the stories of our neighbors.
We have ignored how we contribute to the hardships that exist in our community.
We have turned away from the needs of the poor.
We have shied away from the suffering of our neighbors.
We have valued independence over interdependence and connection.
In so many ways, big and small, our lives have not demonstrated our testimony of new life in Christ.
Forgive us, we pray, that we, your Easter people, may testify the Good News with our voices and our lives. Amen.
Hear the good news: Out of God’s great love for us, we have been ransomed by the precious blood of Jesus. Christ loosens the bonds of sin so that we may live our story of exuberant praise for the God who saves through radical love for God and one another.
In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.
In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.
Thanks be to God! Amen.
Credits:
- Unless listed below, all works cited within the text above.
- *Adapted in full from “Do You Hear What I Hear?” Preaching Notes, Discipleship Ministries Worship Planning Series, December 31, 2023.
Copyright Disclaimer: Under §107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for educational purposes. No copyright infringement is intended. All rights belong to their respective owners.
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