Keys to Godliness OR Unity in the Community

Rev. Jim Merritt

Trinity MCC Gainesville

August 2, 2009

 

Key number one: Recognizing  Sin

 

SIN – How do you feel when I say that word?  SIN – What do you hear in that word?  How does it feel to hear it?  Notice the reaction in your body.  Do you tense up?  Do feel sick?  Are you afraid?  Does it bring up some memory that troubles you?  SIN.  Some of you are thinking, like I probably would about now, “Oh no, he better not go there. I’ll walk right out those doors, etc. etc. etc.  Stay with me for a couple of minutes and let’s think about sin together.

What is sin?  Some would say that sin is disobedience; disobeying God, disobeying parents, disobeying the law, disobeying any authority figure.  Any of that could be sin.  This week I looked up the term SIN in The Illustrated Bible Dictionary and discovered that it spends more than 2 pages trying to define sin.  Some key ideas there are “missing the mark,” “deviating from the goal” and “moral or religious deviation.”  The ideas of breach of relationship and rebellion are also present.  And it lists the most the most profound sin is “rebellion against God.”  Those are heavy definitions.  Let me see if I can come up with something that will work for us.  I want to suggest that Sin is any behavior that interferes with our relationship with God and anything that interferes with our relationships with each other.  Hear me again, Sin is any behavior that interferes with our relationship with God and anything that interferes with our relationships with each other.  Let’s think about that briefly.

We all know when we’ve done wrong or sinned, or at least most of the time.  We immediately feel that “OUCH” when our conscience twitches reminding us that we could have done better.  We experience that feeling in the pit of our stomach that tells us we might be in a little trouble.  So what are we to do?  Well, our Psalm for this morning has some very good news for us.  Did you hear it?  

God loves those centered in truth; God teaches us God’s  hidden wisdom.  God washes us with fresh water, washes us to be bright as snow. God fills us with happy songs, and causes us to dance. God shuts God’s eyes to our sin, and makes our guilt disappear. Creator, God, reshapes our hearts, God, steady our spirits. God does not cast us aside stripped of our holy spirit.  God save us, brings back joy, supports us, strengthens our will and causes us to turn around from our sin and walk in new and better ways so we can teach God’s way and others will turn to God, too. Glory hallelujah, that’s what our loving God does for us.  That’s how God responds to sinful hearts turned in God’s direction and God enables us to turn around for the good of all the world.  Sisters and brothers let us not harden our hearts and let us turn toward God who loves us and hears us and forgives us and helps us turn around in Jesus’ name.  That is the first key to Godliness and that is how we begin to create Unity in the community.

Key number two: Honoring Differences

            We all know that we are created equally and very different.  Do you remember the song from the television show, Cheers¸  “We wanna go where everybody goes, where people are all the same, we wanna go where everybody knows your name.”  There’s some truth in that song.  We do want to be where the people we know as “everybody” are and we do like it when “everybody” knows our name and God in heaven above knows that if we were all the same we would more than likely kill each other.  We do not want to be the same, we are not created to be the same and we must learn to honor the differences among us.  During my study time this week I ran across a commentary by Rev. Rollin Russell, former Conference Minister of the Southern Conference of the United Church of Christ.  Rev. Russell writes, “Mature Christians are not prone to fighting over doctrine; they know that the unity of the church is more important.  Mature Christians are not misled by some new prophet or program; they know that the unity of the church, (that the unity of the community) is paramount. Mature Christian, and I know we all want to be mature Christians, exhibit humility, we stick with each other in good times and in bad, we show patience with each other even when someone is on our last nerve, we work for unity in the community, we stay connected in the bond of the love of God and in the bond of the love we share for each other. And we keep doing that over and over and over again until all of us reach a level of maturity in Christ that ensures that we will continue honoring our differences, celebrating our diversity, and loving each other on out into the future in Jesus’ name.

Key number three: Honoring our gifts

            We know and we heard it again today that God gifts people in many different ways.  We need to honor the gifts and make places for us all to use our gifts.  Pastors, prophets, apostles, evangelists, school teachers, police officers, librarians, professors, food service workers, ditch diggers, doctors, nurses, all kinds of gifts that we can honor in our midst.  We all can benefit from these gifts among us and as we learn to do that we develop Unity in the Community.  I value you for the characteristics God has placed in you.  I value you for the gifts God has gifted you.  You do the same with me.  We share our diversity, we share our gifts and we honor each other because that is the way God created us to be.  Now I must add one word of caution here, because I have lived through the experience I am about to share with you.  I see that old familiar phrase “speaking the truth in love,” do you see it?  My paternal grandmother was known as a godly woman.  She had perfected a lot of what we’ve discussed here this morning. And I want you to know if she were here this morning I would tell you to LOOK OUT if she every said, “I’m just speaking the truth in love…”  LOOK OUT because in the next breath she was about to rip you or someone you knew to shreds.  Please don’t use this verse to defend that kind of behavior.  I can assure you that is the key to a train wreck in the community.  That is a way to build dis-unity in the community.  Instead, let us speak the truth and show our love.  Let us be bound up as one body in Christ, a diverse body, a body full of gifts and talents shared on behalf of God, on behalf of all the world.  Let us honor our similarities and let us honor our differences. 

            In his book, Teachings on Love, Thich Nhat Hanh writes this love meditation;

            May I be peaceful, happy and light in body and spirit

            May she be peaceful, happy and light in body and spirit

            May he be peaceful, happy and light in body and spirit

            May they be peaceful, happy and light in body and spirit

And I would add;

            May WE be peaceful, happy and light in body and spirit.

As we deal honestly with sin, as we honor our diversity and as we celebrate all the gifts God has placed among us.  Those are today’s Keys to Godliness and those are some ways we can build Unity in the Community.  God bless you.  AMEN.

 

 

 

Psalm 51: 3 – 15 

 

A Prayer of Repentance. The Sinner peas to the tender God to be made whole, to be a new creation.

 

Have mercy, tender God, forget that I defied you.

Wash away my sin, cleanse me from my guilt.

I know well, it stares me in the face, evil done to you alone before your very eyes.

How right your condemnation! Your verdict clearly just.

You see me for what I am, a sinner before my birth.

 

You love those centered in truth; teach me your hidden wisdom.

Wash me with fresh water, wash be bright as snow.

Fill me with happy songs, let the bones you bruised now dance.

Shut your eyes to my sin, make my guilt disappear.

 

Creator, reshape my heart, God, steady my spirit.

Do not cast me aside stripped of our holy spirit.

Save me, bring back my joy, support me, strengthen my will.

Then I will teach your way and sinners will turn to you.

 

 

 

 

Ephesians 4: 1 – 16 

 

4I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ²with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ⁴There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, ⁵one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶one God and Parent of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

7 But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. ⁸Therefore it is said,
‘When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;
   he gave gifts to his people.’
⁹(When it says, ‘He ascended’, what does it mean but that he had also descended* into the lower parts of the earth? ¹⁰He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) ¹¹The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, ¹²to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. ¹⁴We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. ¹⁵But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

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