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| Buffet or Feast? |
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What is Authority? What is your authority for faith? What you believe? I think many people today have a Buffet style religion, picking and choosing what we want and rejecting what we don?t. Like the custom made teddy bears ? we make our own faith system the same way. Just as Frank Sinatra sang, “I did it my way!”
Consider the Facebook descriptions of Religion. Some people say they are ?spiritual? and others say something like ?Jesus is my friend.? It is a trend that simply follows a long tradition of growing individualism in our expression of faith.
?And he walks with me and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own. And the joy we share while we tarry there, known other has ever known!?
Or from one of my personal favorite hymns, ?Blessed Assurance Jesus is mine!? to ?This is my story, this is my song,..?
I say this not to disparage these beloved hymns, rather I am pointing out that while these hymns teach us something true about the personal nature of our relationship with God, there is a great danger in emphasizing one particular truth over another.
People were astonished because Jesus taught with authority. By his word He calmed storms. By his word he cast out demons. By his word He even forgave sins!
We, ourselves, have no authority. The only authority we can point to is Jesus Christ: specifically, our relationship with Jesus.
John 1:17 says that ?The Law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.? This Grace and Truth ? this Word of God ? became flesh and lived amongst us.
Jesus told Pilate, ?For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.? and Pilate?s response is ?What is truth?? (c.f., John 18:37-38).
As he was preparing his disciples for his death, Jesus reminded them, ?I am the way, and the truth, and the life.? (John 14:6). Again, Jesus is reminding is that Truth is not some abstraction, it is a relationship with him. Do you want to know the Truth? Them you must know Jesus!
This is why Paul would start of his letters with words like these from the beginning of his letter to the Galatians... ?Paul an apostle?sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead...? (Galatians 1:1).
Paul understood that the only authority he had was in Christ.
All of us share in that authority that comes from Christ as the Body of Christ.
Remember the excitement of the seventy who returned from their mission who reported to Jesus, ?Lord in your name even the demons submit to us!? (Luke 10:17).
In our prayer of confession when we proclaim forgiveness how do we do it? We say, ?In the name of Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven!?
But this means that we must acknowledge his rightful Lordship over our lives...
?Not everyone who says to me, ?Lord, Lord,? will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.? (Matthew 7:21)
He means, don?t just say the words, live the life!
This is why we can?t survive with a buffet style, pick and choose kind of faith. It doesn?t work that way.
When we pick and choose what we want to believe we make ourselves our own ultimate authority regardless of what we may say our authority is... ?not everyone who says Lord, Lord...!?
But, if we are willing to walk away from the buffet line, God has prepared something far more satisfying for us ? something that is perfectly satisfying ? a feast.
So what is this feast? How does it work? How does the metaphor of a feast help us understand how we are faithfully live in the will of God in our lives.
It begins with one of the principal assumptions we make as Christians: God loves what he has created. God loves us and he wants us to know that.
The Holy Scriptures are the story of God?s attempts to reach out to his creation in the redemptive power of his love.
Today we celebrate Holy Communion. It is an expression of God?s love for us. Every time we celebrate Holy Communion we remember how Jesus gathered others around him in building a community ready for the Kingdom of God. Indeed we cannot have Holy Communion without the community we refer to as the Body of Christ.
When Jesus said he would be present where 2 or 3 are gathered together he wasn?t emphasizing the smallness of the number, he was emphasizing the community.
Today there are those who point strictly to the bible as the only expression of the Word of God, providing the only source of authority in our understanding of the faith.
There are others who stress the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.
In our Wesleyan tradition we understand that it is not one or the other: it is both. We believe that God still speaks to us today through the written word which has been safeguarded and passed down to us, but without the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives the words are but ink on paper that may as well be recycled with yesterday?s News and Observer.
We believe that God continues to address us with the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, moving and prodding us into new directions of ministry and mission. But we know that it is the same Spirit who inspired the Prophets of old who continues to illumine us today.
We have that connection!
Furthermore, we have each other in this community of faithfulness. What is protect us against the extremes of the David Koreshes and the Jim Joneses twisting people to their own ends? It is by recognizing that I am accountable to my Small Groups. My small group which meets weekly is accountable to this congregation. This congregation is in connection with the congregations, clergy, and Bishop of this Conference which is in connection with others are around the world.
It means that as United Methodists, we are in communion with Christians who call themselves Baptist, or Lutheran or Presbyterian or Episcopalian. It means that we love in the name of Christ today are responsible to the saints before us who live in glory and are answerable to the church in generations to come.
We are connected in this beloved community because it is the way God has chosen to work and make himself know in the world.
This is why that buffet line is so inadequate. When we pick and choose what we want or what we believe to be right, we miss too much of what God wants and desires for us!
Do you remember the story of the three blind people describing an elephant? The first had hold of the tail and said that the elephant was like a rope. The second felt the side and described the elephant as a wall. The third with hand on truck said the elephant was a tremendous hose. Perhaps you add a fourth with a hand on a leg saying the elephant was like the trunk of a tree. Or a fifth, hold the ear of the elephant saying it was a great leaf.
Individually their understanding of the elephant fell short. Together the three, the four, the five would begin to get a fuller picture.
There may be things about our faith I do not understand or like, but there are others who do. I can?t just dismiss what I do not understand or like. I cannot say the elephant doesn?t have a tail or a trunk or a leg.
At our last General Conference we voted to add a commitment to Witness to the vows we take as disciples of Christ and members of the church ? Christ?s body.
This simply augments the modification made in the mission statement of the Church:
We exist to make Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World
We are called to Be Disciples Who Make Disciples.
As Disciples we choose to follow our Lord
? to reach out
? to transform the world
? one life at a time. |
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