Facing the Dilemma of Evil

This Sunday I am offering something of a follow up to the series on God I just concluded.  I found that after my sermon on the idea of God being love and that our example as Christians should be that of loving people, I was asked by no fewer than three different people on three different occasions to respond to the horrific actions of ISIS.  The questions usually revolved around the idea of how do we love them or should we even love them?

The answer I offered was yes, we should love them.  However, we also have to move to protect the people that they are threatening because we are to love our neighbors.  ISIS is a neighbor we are to love, but we also have to recognize that there comes a point when there is no conversation, no compromise, no reasoning with them.  At that point, it becomes our duty to our neighbors to protect them from the advancement of such brutality.

This is not to be entered into lightly.  There are always consequences for actions, and actions that necessitate violence are most especially not to be taken quickly or without consideration for their ramifications.  So how does that stack up against the teachings of Jesus?  It doesn't.  Jesus did not teach, use, or advocate violence.  What we have to wrestle with is the ambiguity of life in that there are those times in which we have to take up arms - contrary to the teachings of Christ.

So this week, I will focus on the dilemma of combating evil.  It is a daunting subject, and one that I find is constrained by time.  It merits further discussion, and I hope to provide only a catalyst for thought.

I would encourage you to take time in your private reflections to read some of the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor who was arrested by the Nazis for attempting to assassinate Hitler.  Bonhoeffer was ultimately killed by the Nazis, but not before writing some extraordinary observations for Christians to ponder.  In particular I would draw your attention to his works "The Cost of Discipleship" and "Letters and Papers from Prison."

ISIS is an example of a group that seemingly will not be stopped by anything other than violence.  How do we approach that in terms of our Christian witness?  Carefully, to say the least.

Talking About God

Talking about God isn’t something at which Christians are always proficient.  In many ways, we have learned to talk around the subject of God, but not so much about God.  And that is too bad.  I have long believed that the church should be the place where we can voice our thoughts as well as our doubts and questions without fear of reproach or reprisal and therefore it should be the place where we can talk about God freely and openly.

That isn’t always the case.  Again, that is too bad.

This week I begin a series on God.  The overall series, entitled “God of the Ages” is designed to offer some foundational ideas about God.  The reason is that talking about God is difficult.  Part of the problem in talking about God is that our source of information on God, the Bible, isn’t always as clear as we would wish.  In some places God is described as a person walking in a garden.  In other places, God is a pillar of fire, the power that leads us beside still waters or, as the book of Daniel names God, “the Ancient of Days.”

A bit complicated.

Perhaps it is complicated because the nature of God is so vast and beyond description and comprehension that we will struggle with the concept of God by default.  But there are some signposts along the way that can provide a framework in which we can begin to understand the Biblical witness about God.

The first idea is to think of God as light.  While we hear that God creates light in Genesis, we also can think of God as light in that God seeks to be illuminating.

The second idea is that God is boundless.  While that might not sound like much of an idea, we need to recognize that in the Bible, the idea of God as having no boundaries was radical.  God was limited, or so it was believed, to a particular geographic region.  However, by the end of the book of Exodus, the ancient theologians had begun to think of God quite differently: boundless.

The third idea is that God is love.  This idea is perhaps the most easy to comprehend, but the most disturbing and distressing to all involved.  What does it mean to have a God described by the word ‘love’?  We will think about that together.

I hope that you will be with us in our community of faith as we talk about the subject that is so foundational for our existence – God of the Ages.

Growing Up in the Faith

For the next two Sundays, I am going to focus on the idea of growing up in the faith.  As easy as that phrase might sound, it involves two particular aspects that are not easy:  Christian maturity and discipleship.

Maturity is difficult enough.  Christian maturity is something that is also quite difficult. In the United Methodist tradition, one of the goals for the church community (collectively and individually) is to continue to grow into the likeness of Christ.  It is a lifetime journey and each step along that journey is a step into Christian maturity.

It should be said, though, that the journey is not an easy one.  If it were, I wouldn't have books on my shelves called "Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White", "Barriers to Christian Belief", and "Finding Our Way Again."  It seems easy enough, but it takes a level of discipline and discipline takes deliberate choices.

The journey of faith is a journey where we attempt to grow in Christian and spiritual maturity.  We call that "Discipleship."  Christian Discipleship is the way of living that follows the life and teachings of Christ.  A disciple is one who follows and learns from a teacher.  So if we consider ourselves disciples of Christ, then it is Christ who is our teacher.  That also means that we would be those who seek to emulate Christ in who we are and what we do.

In the church, the goal of discipleship is to form people into the image of Christ and to "let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5).  And it is more than just "Jesus and Me."  It is about being a member of a community of disciples.

I hope that you will join us these next two weeks as we look at growing up in the faith and what it means to live a life that demonstrates Christ to those whom we encounter.

- Grace and Peace,
Rev. Charles Ensminger

Who We Are: Covenant and Grace

One of the great challenges facing most churches is that of identity.   With churches seemingly on every corner of every block, people on the outside might wonder what the difference is from one church building to another.  And, as we live in a time where churches are defined more by that which they are against than what they do or hold as sacred, we also find that the people inside the churches sometimes wonder what the differences are from one building to another.

Last week and this week, I wanted to take some time to focus on what it means to be a people who not only believe in the Good News of the grace and mercy of God shown in the person of Jesus, but also what it means to be a particular people: United Methodists.  To do that,  I am going to briefly focus on the distinctiveness of the United Methodist Church, our structure, and how it hinges on two particular ideas:

Covenant relationships

God’s great grace

We begin with the idea of covenant relationships.

A covenant is a formal agreement between two parties in which each assumes particular responsibilities.  Our church has at its heart these kinds of relationships.  These are not to be overlooked or taken lightly, as they define our relationships to one another, to the larger community of faith, and in how we work to respond to God’s grace. 

Our denomination is one that builds much of its understanding of our congregational relationship and structure on the idea of upholding our covenants, our vows, and our words.  It may not sound like a big deal, but if we approach the idea of discipleship with this in mind we quickly see how binding these can be on our life, our thinking, and our actions.

We continue with the idea of God’s grace.

Whereas a covenant is the relationship we establish with God and one another, grace is that on which covenants are built.  Grace is also a gift given by God and by you and I to one another.  And as much as we might over-utilize the word in church, grace is one of those things we simply can't do without.

In the United Methodist Church, we have very particular understandings of grace.  So what are our understandings of grace?

They are threefold.

1.      Prevenient Grace:  Prevenient Grace (preventing grace): the divine love that surrounds all humanity and precedes any and all of our conscious impulses.  Prevenient Grace also awakens us towards repentance and faith. 

The United Methodist Book of Discipline (2004) defines prevenient grace as "...the divine love that surrounds all humanity and precedes any and all of our conscious impulses. This grace prompts our first wish to please God, our first glimmer of understanding concerning God's will, and our 'first slight transient conviction' of having sinned against God. God's grace also awakens in us an earnest longing for deliverance from sin and death and moves us toward repentance and faith."

2.      Justifying Grace:  God reaching out to the believer with accepting and pardoning love.  A change of heart can and does occur under the prompting of grace and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  (conversion and assurance)

3.      Sanctifying Grace:  draws us on towards Christian perfection, which Wesley described as a heart “habitually filled with the love of God ad neighbor” and “having the mind of Christ and walking as he walked.”

This coming Sunday, I will be talking about that particular understanding of grace.  I hope you will come and be with us!

- Grace and Peace

Rev. Charles Ensminger

Welcome and Introduction

Greetings!
Let me introduce this blog.  It is a place where I will be sharing some thoughts and observations from time to time, but most importantly, it is where I will be sharing the direction of the sermons for the coming weeks.  Some pastors are pretty free-form in their sermons (and some tend to come up with what they are going to say as they say it!), while others follow a strict pattern.  Others utilize the idea of series sermons and still others are straight lectionary preachers.
(For those of you who don't know what "lectionary" means, let me explain.  A lectionary is a listing of scripture readings that have been decided upon by the larger Christian church that follow the Christian Year.  In other words, the lectionary is a list of scriptures for each Sunday and special holiday.)
I tend to preach from a mix of lectionary and series.  And this blog will keep you posted as to what those sermons are going to be.
I hope that you will check back on a regular basis, as I will keep this page updated as the series and/or sermons change.

As always, you are invited to come and be a part of our worship service at Harrison United Methodist Church beginning on Sunday mornings at 10:55.

Grace and Peace,
Rev. Charles Ensminger