Scripture: Genesis 1:29-2:4; John 1:19-28; 1 Corinthians 15:32; Matthew 25:40 Series: Creation
Part of a Creation series pairing Genesis 1 and John 1, this sermon opens with the question of what makes us unique and argues that identity is shaped by distinctive practices, not just beliefs. Through Sabbath (which belongs to God and is not Sunday) and John the Baptist (the forerunner who refused to be put in a bucket), Wilson develops Wesley’s means of grace - works of piety and mercy - as the faithful response to grace by which we grow into love. He lands on generosity, launching a stewardship pledge drive as an act of faith that, like Sabbath, makes no sense unless Christ rose, calling Covenant UMC to give to prepare the way of the Lord for generations to come.
Illustrations: buckets-categorizing, pastors-ordination-bucket, fridays-off-not-sabbath, jewish-sabbath-proximity-ghettos, thirty-years-war-religion-as-belief, marathon-training, drifting-wide-road, covenant-pledge-stewardship
October 8
Genesis 1:29-2:4
John 1:19-28
The Voice of Sabbath.
God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all their multitude. On the sixth day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
- Genesis 1:29-2:3a
This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but he confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ ”as the prophet Isaiah said. Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why, then, are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.” This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.
- John 1:19-28
What is something unique about you? What is something you do that is unique? These are two very different questions. I want us to think for a moment about them. When you’re asked the question, what is something unique about you? What are the kinds of things you say? What is something you do that is unique? What are the kinds of things you say? Humans love to categorize. We love to put objects, things, foods, ideas, people, into buckets, and once we have them in those buckets, we know what to do with them. When we have a new experience, once it is finished, we can put it into a bucket or create a new bucket of our life. In a lot of situations, we’ve put people into buckets. If someone is applying for a new job or you start a new job or class, you categorize the people around you, even if subconsciously.
When I was going through ordination in the United Methodist Church, I did not fit into an easy bucket. About 15 years ago, most people who were going through ordination were either currently in seminary or were straight up second career and had a job that could support a family and were seeking ministry. I did not fit in either of those. So there wasn’t an easy bucket to put me in. The system is designed for these two buckets, and if you don’t fit in those two buckets, then it’s a challenging road. Today, I want us to think about our uniquenesss, both how other people see us and how God sees us as unique, and it all starts with creation.
Series Intro
My friends, we are continuing our series on Creation, looking at Genesis 1 and John 1 together to understand more Christ’s presence in Creation, God’s power in creation, and the importance of creation for us today.
Today we’re thinking about uniqueness and we start with Sabbath.
At the end of Genesis 1, God creates humanity in the image of God. When God is finished with creation, God says it is very good in Hebrew. Tov means good. Tov Tov means very good. It’s a big deal. And then got rests on the seventh day Sabbath. God rests in the glory of creation. When God frees the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt and they’re in the wilderness and God gives them Torah to guide their way. One of the central aspects of Torah is to keep the Sabbath, to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. The Sabbath is the seventh day. The Sabbath is Saturday in English. Sometime over the last 200 years, many Christians have confused Sabbath and the Lord’s day. Sabbath is not Sunday. Sabbath is not a rest day. The bible is fairly clear on this. I take a day off from work on Fridays because work on Sundays, but Friday is not my Sabbath. I personally can’t have a Sabbath. The Sabbath is and always will be God’s. I could participate in the Sabbath, but I could never possess it. Sabbath is Saturday because it is given by God, it is not given by man.
I want us to remember those first questions I started with today: What is something unique about you? What is something you do that is unique?
A lot of modern understandings of religion came about in the 17th and 18th centuries with the end of the Thirty Years War and this attempt to prevent future wars that had religious bases. So a lot of language of religion was formed out of basically a Lutheran and Protestant understanding of religion as a set of beliefs independent from the lived experiences of people or nations or what they actually do.
This is why a lot of European countries struggled with how to fit Jews into their systems. Jews did not define themselves by what they believed, but by what they did in response to the Torah of God. If you have a lot of interactions with practicing Jews, the question of what do you believe about God is in many ways secondary to the question of what are you doing in response?
Do you keep Sabbath? Part of keeping Sabbath is not working on Saturday, which meant staying close enough to the synagogue so that if you walk to the synagogue on the Sabbath, you wouldn’t work. Which led to Jews living next to each other, which led to European countries forming these ghettos and enclaves around which Jews had chosen, in many cases, to live next to each other. There is an enormous history of European Anti-Semitism that covers this history, but I want to point out how proximity of Jews was often due to the desire to keep sabbath as much as anything else. It is a huge thing to keep Sabbath. It is an act of faith. It is an act of faith to believe that you’re not gonna get behind if you don’t keep up the grind on Saturday. It is an act of faith to use rest not as a convenience but a duty. It is an act of faith to not see rest as a way for further productivity, but to rest in God just because God is God. The Lord’s day is not the Christian Sabbath. It is a little Easter; a day to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. A lot of Christians didn’t wanna fall prey to work’s righteousness, so they tried to get away from talking about distinctive practices like Sabbath keeping. And yet, there are a lot of distinctive practices to the Christian faith. What is the thing you do that makes you unique and what bucket do you fit?
John the Baptist
The Pharisees and other Jewish leaders didn’t know what bucket to put John the Baptist in. Are you Elijah? Are you Moses now? What bucket can we put you? You don’t seem to fit. John says no to that. He says no to the desire to put him in a bucket. Jesus will also do this during Holy Week. When he has asked, are you the king of the Jews? Jesus’ response is, you say that I am Not quite avoiding the question, challenging the question. John the Baptist does this as well. In the ancient church, John the Baptist was referred to as the forerunner. He is the bridge between the Old and New Testaments. He is the friend of Christ. He is the baptizer. For Jesus to be baptized, there needed to be a baptizer. You can’t self baptize. I can’t baptize myself. There must be community of some sort. John did not see himself fit to baptize Jesus, but Jesus did. John also quotes the prophet Isaiah and the voice crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the, and in this way, I think John can and should be a model for what it means to be a Christian Today: We should make straight and prepare the way of the Lord. What is something unique about you? What is something you do that is unique? If your friends are gonna put you in a bucket, is it gonna be based on a sports team you like? an activity you enjoy? Is it based on your faith? John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, often spoke about the means of grace. We believe that grace is present before we’re aware of it. God is present in the midst of the sin and brokenness of this world. But once we encounter the risen Lord Jesus Christ, there’s grace still offered for us: our journey is not over. There are things we should do as a response to that grace. This is the centrally important word, a response to grace. How we respond are the means of grace. The church has historically understood these. There are works of mercy and works of piety. The works of piety are described in the Sermon on the Mount, prayer, fasting, studying the scriptures, worshiping together. The works of mercy are described in the book of Acts when the apostles set apart the deacons to care for the poor, the hungry and naked, the widows and orphans, to visit the imprisoned. They are also Matthew 25 in the Gospels when Jesus says when you do so unto one of the least of these, you do so unto me. Jesus heals a child on the Sabbath in some Pharisees come to him and asked him why he’s breaking Torah. Jesus says that I’m Lord of the Sabbath. Sabbath Keeping is not centrally important to a Christian. But there are some practices that are. These are not practices that save us. But salvation is not the end of the story. Definitely not in the Bible. As Paul says, We’re saved by faith through grace, not by our own works, but solely thanks be to God through the blood of Jesus Christ. But we’re not finished then. You are set apart for something greater. And that means responding to God in the Holy Spirit, growing in our capacity to love. As John Wesley preached, “all those who desire the grace of God are to wait for it in the means God ordained.” And that’s what the works of mercy and the works of piety are about. They are exercises for us to grow in our capacities, to love, for us to grow into the people that God desires us to be, for us to be emptied of everything but love. To get all the not-love in our hearts out. But just like with long distance running, you don’t run a marathon on your first day training for a marathon. You gotta walk before you can run. Don’t skip ahead. You don’t need to rush. You don’t need to pretend like you’re already finished and complete, but you should act as if God’s grace is bigger than your sin. You start where you are and God meets you where you are, but God does not leave you there. You can choose to stay there, but God does not want you to stay there because if you’re not growing in grace, you’re decreasing, you’re drifting, you’re stagnate, you’re drifting back to the wide road and avoiding narrow one.
We are called together by Jesus Christ as a Church in order to desire the grace of God together and wait for God’s grace in the means God has ordained. We don’t gather to do whatever we wanted to do anyway. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, if Christ didn’t rise from the dead, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. If Christ did rise, then everything is different and we should live into the difference fully.
Today, I want to focus on one means of grace, which is generosity: giving to the work of God. We are starting a stewardship drive now. In this moment. We have pledge cards that you were given this morning. A pledge is an opportunity for discernment about your level of support for the community of which you are a part.
What is something unique about you? What is something you do that is unique? I want us to think about these questions not just for ourselves but for this church. What is something unique about Covenant UMC? What is something that Covenant does that is unique? There are a number of ways to answer this question. Each of you can answer this question differently. We give to support those unique ministries and missions. We give to support a church that is diverse racially, ethnically, culturally, politically, financially, and yet united where it counts, around the truth of God’s mercy and love for us in Jesus Christ.
A pledge is an act of faith. It is not an efficient thing. Like keeping the Sabbath, life might be easier if you didn’t pledge or didn’t give. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, it makes no sense to pledge. It makes no sense to give.
But if he did, if today truly is a little Easter, then we should respond and live into the world by doing the things of God. Giving out of faith in who God is and what God is doing. Giving out of a stewardship and care for what God has given us.
John the Baptist preached, make straight and prepare the way of the Lord. For us today, that is our call. To prepare the way of the Lord. Not only for today but for tomorrow. Not only for this generation but for the next and the next after that. Let us give not just to support what is going on now but what will take place in the future. Not just 2024, but 2054.
Let us desire the grace of God together. Let us practice the means God has given us. Let us serve our neighbor. Let us worship together. And let us give generously to prepare the way of the Lord for generations to come. May that be the bucket in which we are placed. May that be what we do that is unique.
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, we thank you for your good love that sees beyond the surface to our hearts. May our hearts love what is good and pure and may we seek to serve you in all that we do. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.