Debating the Holy: Conservative and Progressive Christians

 

Service of Worship

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

July 25, 2021

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Prelude

Greeting and Announcements

Mission Statement: We are a faith community striving to be, to nurture, and to send forth, disciples of Jesus Christ.

 

Call to worship:

God of gentle rains and warm sun, God who encourages growth;
we are creatures who sometimes grow quickly,
and sometimes get stuck.
God of freedom, of liberation, of binding ropes being cut;
we are bound in ways we don't always understand or recognize.
God of exodus and exile and homecoming,
God who calls us to leave where we are and come home;
help us to have the courage to make the journey
and to trust in the path.
God of health and healing,
God who wants us to be made whole;
we come as people who are wounded in body and in spirit,
people who seek healing.
God who has laid out a way for us to live,
who has given us rules for living in community;
we come as people who sometimes go astray,
people who stretch the rules.

God of Grace,
we come as people who live through that Grace.
And so we praise you for the growth,
we rejoice in being set free,
we dance along the path that leads us home,
we give thanks for the healing we have received,
we relax in the knowledge that we are forgiven
and we live as people of Grace.

 

*Hymn 277, Tell Me the Stories of Jesus

 

1. Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear;
   Things I would ask Him to tell me if He were here;
   Scenes by the wayside, tales of the sea,
   Stories of Jesus, tell them to me.
2. First let me hear how the children stood round His knee,
   And I shall fancy His blessing resting on me;
   Words full of kindness, deeds full of grace,
   All in the love light of Jesus’ face.
3. Into the city I’d follow the children’s band,
   Waving a branch of the palm tree high in my hand;
   One of His heralds, yes, I would sing
   Loudest hosannas, “Jesus is King!”

 

Prayer of Confession:

Wisdom's Heart: deep within, we know how we
have failed to be your people. Our hardened hearts
are closed to the love of Christ; our lust for more
and more blocks the fullness of your grace from
transforming our lives; our trust in the powers of
the world reveals our foolish nature.

Have mercy, God of every generation. Pour out
the rich blessing of forgiveness on our parched
souls. Feed us with Heaven's Bread, so we might
be nourished by your gentleness. Shape us as
your people, and restore us to faithful living,
as we seek to follow our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ, in service to everyone we meet.

Assurance

The wideness of God's mercy, the range of
God's forgiveness, the infinite love of God,
the Heart of hope which is never empty: all
these gifts are ours, as God restores us to
the fullness of life meant for us.

 

1 Corinthians 8: 1-13

 

Concerning Food Sacrificed to Idols

8 Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. ² Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. ³ But whoever loves God is known by God.^[a]

⁴ So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” ⁵ For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), ⁶ yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

⁷ But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. ⁸ But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.

⁹ Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. ¹⁰ For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? ¹¹ So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. ¹² When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. ¹³ Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.

 

A Message

“Debating the Holy: Conservative and Progressive Christians”

 

We’re now up to part three of this sermon series within a sermon series, and by the end of this sermon Diana should have a full answer to her question “If our evangelical friends are all about Jesus, then why does it feel like they quote the Hebrew Bible a lot when they’re telling us what we’re not allowed to do?” The first week we talked about how it comes off as jarring in general when Christian people start quoting from the OT because we so rarely pull our wisdom from those books, even though we should. We also talked about how the rules that laid our Judeo-Christian foundation are found in the First Testament, and if you’re concerned about fine details you might find a lot of comfort there, just like Moses’ followers did. Last week we talked about this lingering perception Christian people have had that the character of God drastically changed between the First and Second Testaments, and therefore if someone quotes from the First Testament they’re trying to quote a harsh, scary God. Now that we’ve covered all that ground, now we’re touching the most important piece: the divide between conservative and progressive Christians that makes us distrust one another’s intentions to the point that our conservative friends sound preachy and we get offended by that perception.

 

But before we get into that, I have a story to share with you. It comes from a video a friend had me watch several years ago. The friend is nontheistic, and she wanted people like me, who do believe in the existence of God, to understand how she feels listening to us talk to each other.

 

The video my nontheistic friend asked me to watch was about a young man who saw an ad in the paper for a used Honda Prius at his local car dealership. He took a copy of the ad over to the dealership and asked to talk to a sales associate about it. The first salesperson who met him was exuberant to tell him about the Honda Prius. “It’s a beauty,” he said, “it’s a shiny red sportscar. You’ll get from zero to sixty in a blink of an eye, and you’ll be the coolest guy on the road. Everyone needs a Honda Prius.”

 

“That sounds great!” the guy said. “Hey, can we go for a test drive? I really want to see the car!”

 

“Oof, no can do, bud.” Said the salesman. “The Honda Prius isn’t here right now. But I have one myself, and let me tell you, it’s the best car there is.”

 

“That’s great,” said the customer, “but there’s no way I’m buying the Honda Prius unless you actually show me the car.”

 

Just then a second sales associate showed up. She was concerned something was awry on the sales floor, and asked, “Can I help with something?”

 

“Yes,” the customer said. “I saw an ad in the paper for the Honda Prius. It sounds like a great car and I want to go for a test drive.”

 

“Oh, I have a Honda Prius!” the saleswoman gleamed. “It’s an eight-seater minivan, and such an elegant shade of powder blue! It has such excellent safety features, and a great trunk for everything I have to haul around for my kids! I feel so secure and confident driving my family to school and church and work and little league in the Honda Prius. I wouldn’t trust another car on the market.”

 

Just then the first sales associate became angry. “It’s not a minivan! It’s a sports car! I should know, I have one!”

 

“Excuse you,” retorted the sales woman, “I’ve been a proud Honda Prius driver for many years, no one knows more about the Honda Prius than me.”

 

The dealership manager heard the yelling on the floor and got very worried, so he came out to help. “What seems to be the problem here?” he asked.

 

“Sir, there’s no problem,” replied the customer, “I didn’t mean to start an argument. I just saw this ad in the paper for the Honda Prius, and I wanted to go for a test drive, but neither of these sales people can show me the car.”

 

“Oh, say no more, friend!” said the manager. “I drive the Honda Prius! It’s a 4-door sedan! It’s a sleek silver, with an electric engine! It gets a hundred miles a gallon! It’s so great for the environment!”

 

“It’s not an electric car! It’s a sports car!”

 

“No, it’s a minivan!”

 

The manager and the two sales associates engaged in a full blown screaming match in the dealership lobby, while the customer walked away in deep dismay, thinking about something that was advertised as so great and yet did nothing but make people fight. But he had to stand his ground—how could he buy the car if no one could show it to him first?

 

Of course, the punch line at the end of this story is that there’s no such thing as a Honda Prius.

 

Friends, how many car dealership lobbies—or church sanctuaries, or school classrooms, or government buildings, or thanksgiving dinner tables—have we turned into war zones because we love the car with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, but can’t agree on what it looks like? And, far more important than all of our differences, and all of our fighting, even our literal warfare, how many people have come near us looking for the most powerful love we know of, and how many people have we scared away from spirituality for good with our bickering? Because those people, the ones left on the outside of all of this, disgusted by a bunch of salespeople fighting over how to describe the car, are the ones we’re really hurting. We should be helping our neighbors know Jesus more, and leave all the bickering out of it.

 

Mind you, it’s not that we don’t have valid reasons to get passionately angry when we’re talking about our Creator. Our hearts are mostly in the right place. Especially because the hottest tempers among us flare when matters of justice and human rights hang in the balance.

 

Unfortunately, the United Methodist Church becomes a more powerful example of this hostility, especially this pointed fighting between conservatives and progressives, with every passing month. Indeed, when we’re trying to answer Diana’s original question about why our Jesus-centric conservative friends always seem to quote the Hebrew Scriptures when these arguments come up, we really don’t have to talk about hypothetical conservative evangelicals out in the remote ether, and progressives somewhere far away. We have both of those flavors of Christian, and many, many other variations, represented in United Methodist congregations right here in the Capital Region. And Diana’s question is very timely because the tension is really getting palpable.

 

In recent months our most conservative, evangelical Methodist friends have taken the Wesleyan Covenant Association, a grassroots organization that launched in 2016, and morphed it into the Global Methodist Church, a new denomination with a name, a mission statement, an official logo, and a core set of beliefs. Leaders in the GMC have even drafted up comparison charts between the beliefs and structure of the GMC and the likely future of a post-separation UMC. Even over a document that’s at least theoretically supposed to be just the facts, sparks are flying. Is the GMC making propaganda to try to get more people to leave with them? Are we who plan to stay looking for barbs where there are none?

 

Perhaps the best angle from which to view Diana’s question is the counter question that might come from a friend who plans to go with the GMC, and I’ve heard many forms of it so I’m pretty sure I know how it would go. If Diana’s question is “Why would our conservative friends quote the Hebrew Scriptures so heavily and legalistically when those aren’t the words of Christ?”, the question one of our GMC fiends might counter with would be “Why do progressives feel like they don’t have to follow the Bible’s rules?”

 

This morning’s passage from Paul is all about the rules laid out in the Hebrew Scriptures, and whether we should get mad and preachy when other people don’t follow them. The rule in question in this passage is about eating meat. If your Pagan friend sacrifices a lamb to their god, and they’ve got meat leftover, can we eat it? The Hebrew Bible says a hard no, and some of Paul’s friends in Corinth we’re getting pretty angry that not everyone valued that rule the same way they did. But this whole passage can sound kind of unrelatable to us because, I mean, do any of you get your meat that way? Sean prefers to just buy it at Hannaford. And I’m a vegetarian so I’m just staying out of the whole thing. Paul’s answer to that debate was this: it’s not the rule that’s so important. We know who God is, what God values, and that the Divine doesn’t materialize in animal sacrifices. The rules matter when whether we’re following them or not becomes a “stumbling block” that becomes a fixed barrier between you and someone who might have seen Jesus in you today. The rules matter when that customer is walking around the dealership desperately looking for the car and we scare them away with our fighting.

 

And we’ve had lots of rules we’ve disagreed on over the ages, within and without our Methodist circle: can women preach? Is it ethical to own a firearm, and to use it in self defense? Is war ever justified? How much wealth is too much? What is our obligation to help the poor? What should Christians believe about capitalism, or communism, or socialism? How should we feel about immigration, and how should we support the stranger among us? How should we respond to civil rights protest movements, like Black Lives Matter? Should we teach critical race theory? How should we feel about healthcare reform, housing reform, police reform, prison reform? Should people have the right to use birth control? Should people have the right to access abortion care? Should same gender couples get married? Can they raise children? Should our churches ordain lgbtqia people?

 

Some of us have an answer for every question I just posed. Some of us aren’t so sure, or think it depends on the circumstances. Some of us lean very progressive, some of us lean closer to the center, some of us lean further to the right, and some of us haven’t found the needle yet.

 

I would say about Diana’s question that our conservative friends may feel very comforted by rules and laws, and may find boundaries to be the perfect sign of God’s love, and many of those boundaries come from Moses’ world. Most of y’all know by now that I lean very far to the left personally and spiritually, and conservative friends who have struggled to understand my theology have asked me if my Bible has perforated pages so I can just rip out the ones I don’t like. Touché.

 

But at the end of the day I find myself in one firm place, and it’s this: the people don’t serve the rules, the rules serve the people. Episcopal priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor said it best when she wrote, “The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor. Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.”[1] All these artificial distinctions we draw between all the different kinds of Christians in the world mean precious little in the final analysis. It’s the people of God that matter. Our duty as Christ-following people is not to pick a label, or to point fingers, or to judge, or to shame, and it certainly isn’t to fight with each other. Our duty is to embody a special love that we only know because of Jesus, and that is universal to every Christian under the sun. Really, it goes back to what we learned in Sunday School.

 

The Church is not a building,

The Church is not a steeple,

The Church is not a resting place,

The Church is the people.

I am the Church

You are the Church

We are the Church together.

All who follow Jesus all around the world,

Yes we’re the Church together.

 

And in time, we’ll figure out how to love one another as Jesus taught us. Amen.

 

 

*Hymn 388: O Come and Dwell in Me

1. O come and dwell in me,
Spirit of power within,
and bring the glorious liberty
from sorrow, fear, and sin.

2. Hasten the joyful day
which shall my sins consume,
when old things shall be done away,
and all things new become.

3. I want the witness, Lord,
that all I do is right,
according to thy mind and word,
well-pleasing in thy sight.

4. I ask no higher state;
indulge me but in this,
and soon or later then translate
to thine eternal bliss.

 

Time of Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

 

Holy God, bless our lives, sanctify us,
and in your way, grant us our hearts desire.
Anoint us with your grace, that what we desire is also what you desire.
Help us to understand that our hearts’ true desire is the love of you.
May the love of Christ urge us on, may we walk by faith.
Thank you God, for all our blessings.

Holy God, bless those who govern –
Bless the leaders of nations, countries, towns, and cities.
And those who lead in all manner – social, political, and religious –
Bless us all. Fill the hearts of all with your wisdom.
Guide us in the way of justice and integrity for all.
Guide us to walk by faith.

Holy God, tend to those who suffer in mind, body, and spirit.
Tend to the tired, the dying, the poor and the hungry.
Help us to follow the love of Christ, a love which urges us on.
Help us to seek and serve Christ in others, bringing forth a new creation.

Holy God, we ask all this in the name of Christ, our redeemer.
Holy God, we ask all this by the Holy Spirit who activates your love in us.
Holy God we ask all this that your love may be like seed scattered—
manifesting in small and unexpected ways—the greatness of You.
May your love may take root in our lives, and we may walk by faith. Amen.

 

Our Father, Mother, and Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen.

 

Offering, doxology, and prayer of dedication

 

*Hymn 598, O Word of God Incarnate

 

1.     O Word of God incarnate,
O Wisdom from on high,
O Truth unchanged, unchanging,
O Light of our dark sky:
we praise you for the radiance
that from the hallowed page,
a lantern to our footsteps,
shines on from age to age.

2. The church from you, our Savior,
received the gift divine,
and still that light is lifted
o'er all the earth to shine.
It is the sacred vessel
where gems of truth are stored;
it is the heaven-drawn picture
of Christ, the living Word.

3. The Scripture is a banner
before God's host unfurled;
it is a shining beacon
above the darkling world.
It is the chart and compass
that o'er life's surging tide,
mid mists and rocks and quicksands,
to you, O Christ, will guide.

4. O make your church, dear Savior,
a lamp of purest gold,
to bear before the nations
your true light as of old.
O teach your wandering pilgrims
by this their path to trace,
till, clouds and darkness ended,
they see you face to face.

 

Benediction

I ask God to strengthen you by the power of the Spirit—
not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—
that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in.

And I ask God that
with both feet planted firmly on love
you’ll be able to take in with all Christians
the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love.

Go in the love of God!

---

[1] Second Presbyterian Church. “Theology, Thoughts, and Coffee”. https://www.secondchurch.org/story.asp 24 July 2021.