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Sermon - On Purpose: Become Like Jesus · North Raleigh United Methodist Church Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're going to continue in our series about on purpose.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about our purpose statement, right?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we have already sung it.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you already got it in your heads, right?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: That we belong as you are, become like Jesus, and be loved for God's world.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're specifically talking about become like Jesus.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to be looking at Paul's letter to the Galatians starting in chapter 5, verse 22.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: There is no law against things like this.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the self with its passions and its desires.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: If we live by the Spirit, let's follow the Spirit.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, this is the word of God for us, the people of God.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Let us pray.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: O Lord, let the words of my mouth and the thoughts and meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: During our time together at Duke Divinity School, Pastor Laura connected with a group that was practicing centering prayer.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, centering prayer is an ancient prayer technique that involves no speaking.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: You are trying to center yourself in the presence of God.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: It shares many qualities with meditation and mindfulness practices.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So this small group would meet at 1 p.m.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: on Thursdays in a small room with no windows in the basement of the divinity school.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Laura invited me to come with her.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: She said it would be good for me.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so Sister Joanna, a Catholic nun, a nice, soft-spoken, kind Catholic nun, would lead our group together in this practice.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we would sit in a circle around a table, and she would introduce the time together, and then we were to sit in 20 minutes of silent, centering prayer.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: After the time was up, she would invite us into a time of reflection over what we had experienced or what we had heard from God.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the people would talk about a particular image that came to them while they were praying, or they would talk about an emotion that flooded over them during the time.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Most everyone would share how it had been difficult for them to settle into the prayer and to find themselves centered, but eventually they did.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And every time when it came to my turn around the circle to share, I had to confess that I had fallen asleep.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Every time.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think I went to this group with Laura three different times, and every time I fell asleep.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sister Joanna would say, Well, that just must be what you needed at that time.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: But really, I felt pretty ashamed.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like Jesus was coming back to the disciples the night he was betrayed, right?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he takes the three of them out there and he says, Keep watch with me while I pray.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes and prays, and what does he do?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: He finds them back asleep.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, You couldn't even keep watching me for an hour.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like Jesus was coming to me and saying, You couldn't even stay awake for 20 minutes, kid.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like I wasn't holy enough for this centering prayer practice.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've felt this in your spiritual lives before, but I have.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've set goals that will make me better, and then I fail at them.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like setting spiritual New Year's resolutions.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: This month, I say, I will read my Bible every day.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: This Lent I will journal at night before bed.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: This week I will not raise my voice with my family.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And whatever spiritual resolution that I have set, I inevitably fall short.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: So when we say that the second part of our purpose is to become like Jesus, that can feel quite daunting.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: How am I supposed to become like Jesus when I can't pray for 20 minutes without falling asleep?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Can't we qualify this thing a little bit?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Surely, surely the church leadership meant to say, become more like Jesus, right?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't actually expect people to become like Jesus.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: People are susceptible to sin and we get tired and we have bad days.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or surely they meant become closer to Jesus, right?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: That seems like a good hope and maybe a little bit more realistic and achievable.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing about this purpose that we've set out before us it's inspiring and challenging at every level.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: When we talk about belong as you are, that initially sounds so nice.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: But when we think about the implications that it takes for every person to experience a deep sense of belonging, that's a massive challenge.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: It calls us as individuals and us as a church community to ask if we really mean it.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do we want every person to experience belonging as they are?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And do we actually experience belonging as we are?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: The good news about become like Jesus is that it's not about your human effort.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: No matter how hard you try, you're going, you're not going to become like Jesus by your own effort.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I love this passage from Galatians about the fruit of the spirit.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Fruit is the natural result of a healthy plant.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: If the plant didn't get enough water or didn't get enough sunlight, fruit will not grow.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: If the plant has a disease, the fruit will be rotten.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the fruit that we are growing is of the spirit.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: That means that the spirit of Jesus grows the fruit in you and through you and me.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: What is this fruit?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Notice this fruit is singular.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a list of things for you to get better at.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is not Patience Month for you because you got gentleness last month.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is telling the community at Galatia who is struggling with infighting, a community who is trying to prove to one another who is really holy that the way that they show genuineness in faith is by their fruit.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: When we talk about becoming like Jesus, we are talking about holiness.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Holiness is not about how hard we work.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: In the old hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God, Martin Luther penned these words, our striving would be losing.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Our striving would be losing.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: My striving was the centering prayer group.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: If only I could stay awake for those 20 minutes.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now you might be saying, holiness?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's really what you're shooting for in this new purpose?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't we be talking about something more relevant than that?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say holiness, absolutely.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Holiness means that God is doing something in you and through you to be made holy, to be sanctified, is to be set apart.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk for a few moments about holiness.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: When you said yes to Jesus, you became a part of God's family.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And God invited you to live as one of God's children.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Part of becoming like Jesus is the hope that you are becoming more loving, that you are becoming more joyful, more peace-filled, etc.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: When I look at Jesus' life in the Gospels, I want more of how he lives in my life.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: I want to mimic and copycat those ways of Jesus, and that's good.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'll call individual holiness.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul is talking in this passage to the church at Galatia.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is saying that it's not just individuals who have the fruit of the Spirit, but it is God's church together.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we are not only called to individual holiness, we are called also to corporate holiness or communal holiness.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, this purpose is about you.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And this purpose is about y'all.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: You get that?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: This purpose is about you, and this purpose is about y'all.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: We are called to be a church who lives out of the fruit of the Spirit.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: We are for by Jesus to be a community who is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: For us to do that together, we'd have to be really connected to God and really connected to one another.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll bet a lot of us have experiences in church that did not embody the fruit of the Spirit.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: You may have church experiences of hatred.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: You may have church experiences of mean-spiritedness.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: You may have church experiences of feeling excluded.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: You may have church experiences of abuse.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: For all of those, my heart breaks.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: For all of those, God's heart indeed breaks.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: When those bitter experiences are what we know of as church, then the church did not have God's fruit.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: The church got infected with the nastiness of selfishness and sinfulness.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why does this happen?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think it happens because we try to do this following Jesus thing on our own without the power of the Holy Spirit, and we end up falling asleep during the 20 minutes.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus invites us to a much better way of living together, the way of fruitfulness.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: When I hear that list love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, I want to live in that type of community.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: I want that to be the way that our church lives and moves and has our being and operates in and out of the power of the Holy Spirit.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the holiness that we are called to is both individual and corporate.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's about you and it's about y'all.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: When we talk about holiness, we are talking about becoming like Jesus.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: How do we do this?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: James 4, 8 says, draw near to God, and God will draw near to you.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 29 and verse 13 says, When you seek me, you will find me, when you seek me with all your heart.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: When we think about the spiritual life, about growing closer to Jesus, we do this by drawing near to God.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: How do you draw near to God?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, by spending time with God.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: We have many ways to do this, many tools in our tradition to access the presence of God.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Prayer, first of all, simply talking to and listening to God.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: For us to grow in any relationship, there has to be communication.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Prayer is that communication time.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: We also grow by reading Scripture.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: God has a word for us.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it would make sense that we try to understand it and hear what God is saying.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: We draw near to God in worship, both here together and also individually.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: These are all good.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Holiness has a personal beginning to it.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: When John and Charles Wesley gathered a small group of students together at Oxford University in the early 1700s, they would meet for three hours each night and ask each other a list of very difficult questions about their relationship with God.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Here are just a few examples of those questions.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: That was one question.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Did the Bible live in me today?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do I give it time to speak to me every day?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: How do I spend my spare time?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: When did I last speak to someone else about my faith?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: They would pray and ask 22 of these questions every night to each other.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: This small group of young men started to be made fun of for their methods, for taking their faith so seriously.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: So they were derided by their peers as Methodists.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And as this band of devoted disciples of Jesus grew in personal holiness, one of them came to the meeting convicted that they needed to start caring for those in prison and those who were sick.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that's just what they did.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: They began to visit the prisons and care for the sick in their community.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they began to raise money when they gathered.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And as the Methodist movement eventually grew, John Wesley preached and cared for the poor working class minors and others who were not on the upper rung of society.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Those folks who were not welcomed in the village churches most of the time.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: So Wesley and the Methodists went to them.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And John Wesley would famously say in his life: There is no holiness without social holiness.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: When we read about Jesus in the Gospels, we find Jesus healing people, providing food for them, and freeing them of their burdens.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: In Luke 4, Jesus began his ministry in the synagogue by giving his inaugural address.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: As he read from the prophet Isaiah, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me, he has sent me to preach good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus did these things in order to display God's kingdom.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: He also drew near to God in private prayer and devotion.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Both things.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: In the way that I grew up understanding salvation, I learned plenty what I was saved from.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was saved from hell and eternal punishment.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was supposed to live a holy life because that demonstrated that the faith was real.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I prayed and read my Bible and worshiped, and those were good things.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the way we lived out our faith the most was to make sure that everyone else around us was saved too.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: This meant telling people about Jesus.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: The emphasis was on what I was saved from.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: But that started to feel incomplete in my life.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: As I've grown as a United Methodist, I've learned what I am saved for.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that, my friends, is social holiness.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saved to do this work that Jesus invites us to.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, if our Christianity does not make a difference to the poor and to the marginalized, then what difference does it make?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's who Jesus spent his time around.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: One of the greatest gifts that the United Methodist Church has to offer our world is that we believe in personal and social holiness.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: We believe that you should be becoming like Jesus and growing in your relationship with him.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we believe that our faith presses us to care for the most vulnerable people in our world.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times today, churches that are known as conservative are those who care a lot about personal holiness.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And churches that are known as progressive are those who care about social holiness.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: My friends, these things should not be divided.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: That is unbiblical.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: We are not a personal holiness or a social holiness church.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: We are both a personal and a social holiness church.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: We are being drawn close to Jesus and he sends us out to care for his world.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I might get to preaching a little bit this morning, my friends.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: You might have to say amen up there to me, even at North Romley United Methodist Church, even at 11 o'clock on a Sunday.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, we are saying that when we become like Jesus, it is more than assenting to a set of beliefs.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: In so many church settings, we became convinced that we had to believe the right set of tenets in order to become the right kind of Christian.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the concern of Jesus is always about who we are, and not that we have the exact right set of answers.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Think about Jesus and the Pharisees.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: All through the Gospels, the Pharisees have all of the right answers.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is concerned about who they are becoming.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have the fruit.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Their way of life is not full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the issue.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: If the fruit of the Spirit is not something that you and I can conjure up and make happen, then how do we get it?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: How do we grow in holiness?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: We have to yield our lives to Jesus.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I like this word, yield.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: In Galatians, Paul says it like this: those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the self with its passions and its desires.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, we don't just power through to become holy.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Saying yes to Jesus involves saying no.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: No to our selfish desires.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: No to our inclination to look out for number one at all costs.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: In the gospel reading, Jesus says it this way, right?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: There is something powerful that ties this teaching of Jesus and the one from the Apostle Paul.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: That in order to become like Jesus, we have to die.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: We have to yield our desires and the way we thought our lives were supposed to go to how God wants them to go.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: So when we die to ourselves, we are raised with Jesus to new life.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is concerned that we walk the walk.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the people around us are concerned about too.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do Christians really walk the walk?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Does that church really walk the walk?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's why Paul encourages the Galatians, if we live by the Spirit, then let's follow the Spirit.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: In other translations, it says, if we live by the Spirit, let's keep in step with the Spirit.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't make fruit happen.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: But we have to yield our lives open-handed to God working in us.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Our church, our community has to hold our life together open-handed to God moving and working in us.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what happens.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: That fruit tastes really good.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: It is incredibly delicious.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be part of a family full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: If we truly embodied this fruit, it would be like when you find an incredible restaurant and you tell your friends, you've got to try this.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you tell them that they gotta try that specific entree or thing on the menu, the jalapeno cilantro hummus at Sassoul.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna go to it, right?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to try this for when the fruit of the Spirit is happening, it creates a viral fruit.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: What would happen if when people came into contact with North Raleigh United Methodist Church, they felt the contagious joy and healing of Jesus?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: May we become full of the contagious fruit of the Spirit.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: May we become like Jesus.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.