Grace United Methodist Church - Franklin, IN
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  • About Us
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    • What We Believe
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    • Upcoming Events
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  • Classes & Small Groups
    • Adult >
      • Classes and Spiritual Formation Opportunities
      • Small Group Locations & Times
    • Youth
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    • What is tithing?
  • Preschool
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Something Beautiful - Leviticus 19:1-2, 18

2/26/2019

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Do you ever look at the world today and think to yourself, “What a mess!”  I know I do. I mean, it’s a mess. From the men and women on Washington’s capitol hill, all playing a grown up version of the childhood game of “king of the hill,” to people staging a hate crime attack in an attempt to get more money from their employer, you might the world we live in is a mess.  People taking the law into their own hands and hurting innocent people. Young children being treated for severe anxiety and depression, some as young as 8 years old being admitted to treatment centers. Teenagers and adults alike thinking that taking their own life is the only answer to their questions of who they are, who they love, and who loves them.  Something is messed up. When Christians, followers of Jesus, can’t accept one another, and instead judge one another in order to manage their own sin, making themselves feel better, something is messed up. When we fail to even try to get along or agree to disagree and rather argue, build walls, and allow fear of the unknown, fear of being uncomfortable, and fear of being wrong, to stand in the way of the kind of community God ordained and Jesus modeled, something is messed up.  

Pick up a newspaper, watch the news, pull up a podcast, or read someone’s feed on Facebook or Instagram and you will see life is a mess right now.  Whether it is on a national, local or personal level, or whether it is politics or religion. What are we to do? How can anything beautiful, good or true come from such a mess?

The words of Leviticus 19 help us step into the answer.  Yes, Leviticus 19. It’s not the first place I would have looked either.  It’s not the only place to find our answers. I don’t know that I have ever heard a sermon based on this book of Old Testament law, codes, rules and regulations.  Perhaps that is why it is so powerful. Perhaps the strength of what it offers is in the fact we don’t expect to find much there. Perhaps that is why it can take something so messy and create, discover, build and imagine something beautiful.  

From the perspective of a modern or postmodern reader, Leviticus appears to be the least useful book of the Bible.  However, here is something that could cause us to rethink all that: In the New Testament, Leviticus is quoted several times, including by Jesus himself.  When Jesus was asked about which commandment was the greatest, he answered by citing two: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  That second one, “Love your neighbor as yourself” is a direct quote from Leviticus 19 (our text for today), and Jesus said that “Upon these two commandments hang ALL the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures” (Matt. 22:40).  The apostle Paul also quotes that verse from Leviticus in his letters to the Romans (13:9) and to the Galatians (5:14). What’s more, the New Testament book of James, which almost everybody agrees is a helpful and important book, actually seems to be a sermon based on Leviticus 19:12-18.

Given all that New Testament attention to Leviticus, perhaps we should take another look at this book, especially chapter 19. People of God, hear these words again - Lev. 19:1-2 and 18. In it, we are taught the whole great big mess of life in community comes down to and can be cleaned up in two verses.  All you have to do? Be holy and love your neighbor.
Easier said than done right?  Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe, we as humans simply makes things much harder than they need to be.  One of the first questions we ask is “How?” How do we demonstrate a holy life? How do we love our neighbor?  Wait, no that’s not right. No, the first question we need to ask is what every two and three year old knows to ask, “why?”  Why live a holy life? Why love my neighbor, especially that one?

Answer? “Be holy God says, because I, the Lord your God, am holy.”  I am going to tell you something that will serve you well if you don’t already know it.  Remember when you would question your mom, dad, or maybe your grandparents? More often than not, what would they eventually say to you?  “Because I said so, that’s why!” The phrase “I, the Lord your God, am holy” is the the divine “because I said so”.

If you think about it, yes maybe from our parents it was sometimes said in frustration but if you could hear behind their words and into the depth of their voice, they were really saying, “because I love you.”  It is easier to say, “because I said so” but there is much more to it. So it is with God. “Be holy.” Why? Because I said so - because I love you far more than you can possibly imagine. I want to provide for you, sustain you and bring you into completion.  I want to be in relationship with you. I love you.

That is why.

The trouble with being holy, is that is cannot be rolled up into a single activity or be reduced to a way of dressing or expressed solely by carrying a Bible everywhere.  Church attendance by itself doesn’t count. Knowing the Lord’s Prayer, Apostles Creed, or the 10 Commandments in and of itself doesn’t cover it. Rather, the presence of God - the very imprint of God among us is expressed in our daily practices and acts of thoughtfulness, kindness, justice, mercy, compassion, generosity, and wait for it...love.  Those are the expressions of God’s holiness in the world. Whether that world is right here in Franklin, the bank down the street, the drop off line at school, the doctor’s office, in your own house, or across to the nation's capital and around the world. That is the loving your neighbor part.

Behind the archaic sacrificial instructions found in Leviticus, the outdated rituals and complex dietary restrictions that are unnecessary for contemporary Christian living is this rock-solid truth: we are to be a holy people because the God who created, designed and loves us, is holy. We are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  EVERYTHING else, Jesus said, hangs on those two: love God, love neighbor. In doing so, we come to recognize, it is not about us - what we want, what we like, what we can or cannot accept, what makes us comfortable, what makes us feel popular or in control. It is not about being right, having more experience or authority.

The times and culture may have changed but the essence and truth of God’s message has not.  It was and is and forever will be about our lives being an expression of a holy God who so loved the world that he gave everything to us out of a desire to make something beautiful, good and true.  That “something” begins in and comes to life by living in community WITH others; alongside and accompanying ALL people on this crazy train called life and faith.

The bottom line dear people of God, is and always has been this: whatever mess we find ourselves in in this life - in this world, in the church, in our families, with friends, with strangers, and with those who think, act, live, choose, and believe differently, the only way through is to recognize it is about love and relationships.  God’s love expressed in our connection to people and them to us. It’s called community and we need to be about loving and relating to people, all people. Not because we agree with them, or we like them, or they us. Not because we fully understand them, but because being in relationship, being connected to others is what it means to experience the completeness and perfection of God.  
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May we all do our part to make it so.  Amen.

​Pastor Jenothy Irvine



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Your Cheatin' Heart - Jeremiah 17:5-10

2/19/2019

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The prophet Jeremiah was a prophet during a hard time in Israel. All hell was fixing to break loose as the Babylonian Army loomed on the outskirts of Jerusalem, a sign of God’s coming judgment. Times were difficult.

Following King Josiah, there was a brief period of reform and good in the land. However, after King Jehoiakim assumed the throne, things went from good to bad to worse, as the people enjoyed more and more material pleasures, forgetting God’s laws and purposes.

And so, when Jeremiah says that the human heart is perverse, he is seeing firsthand what can go wrong when people are being unfaithful, or when a ruler goes bad.

Remember that in Jewish thought the human heart is the seat of reason. Emotion resides in the abdomen, or in what we call the “gut.” The cheating heart, therefore, is actually a corrupted or a deceitful mind, a way of not seeing clearly. Persons become deceived when they think they are better than others. There is a kind of thinking that wants to take credit for the good things and then blame others when the problems come. 

What the prophet Jeremiah wants us to do is wake up and live in a place close to God’s heart, making sure we have roots deep in the ground of God’s mercy (v. 8).

How may we stay close to God’s heart? What may we need to do to follow in Christ’s step and have a heart open to God’s Spirit?

Pastor Andy Kinsey
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Snuffed Out? - Matthew 5:13-20

2/12/2019

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Perhaps we may remember singing the song “This Little Light of Mine” in Vacation Bible School. I know we sing it quite often in preschool. It is a song that is easy to sing, and, if not at times, to sentimentalize. Actually, however, it is a song that was sung in many African American churches during the civil rights movement: persons sang it as they were preparing to go out into the world: “This little light of mine, I’m goin’ let it shine. Don’t let Satan, snuf it out, I am going to let it shine.”

The words, of course, are based on the passage of scripture in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus says “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. So let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:15-16). That’s the sermon in a nutshell: we are to be light-bearing followers of Jesus, lampstands in a dark room, not kept in a closet.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is wanting the people who follow him to be light. That may sound like an audacious claim, for isn’t Jesus the light of the world (John 1:4-13, John 8:12, John 12:46)? In John’s Gospel, Jesus is light of the world: “The light has come into the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:13). But now, Jesus says, “You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth.” 

Does this mean that Jesus is now out of the picture?

Well, if you call yourself a Christian, no! Jesus’ light and your light come from the same source. Jesus’ calling and your calling come from God. Jesus’ mission and your mission are grounded in the kingdom. There is to be continuity between what Jesus did and what we do. Because Jesus is the Light, we can let our light shine. This is not a contradiction; rather, it is a kingdom strategy: it is a strategy to relate to others and to offer God’s love and peace.

How may we employ Jesus’ strategy in all we do? How may we serve as light and as salt wherever we are? What steps do we need to take to light up our world?
​
Pastor Andy Kinsey
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God Blessed Living - Matthew 5:1-12

2/5/2019

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One of the reasons the Sermon on the Mount in general and the Beatitudes in particular continues to confound people today is because they do not buy into the logics of this world. They do not fit into the way we think about politics or religion, but rather point to what God is like and, in doing so, to what true religion entails. They paint a picture of what the followers of Jesus are to be about, rather than what we would like to see happen. In doing so, they turn our expectations upside down about life in God’s kingdom. 

This is another reason why Beatitudes confound us as well: the Beatitudes are tough because they represent a kind of speech that does what it says and fulfills what it promises. It’s why the two most important words in the Beatitudes are the words “are” and “will.” Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. And so forth. 

Jesus wants us to know who the persons are God is blessing. God blesses people, and not just any people but people who are hurting, who are humble, who are working for peace, or who are poor in spirit. 

Why? Because that’s what God does; that’s who God is! It is in God’s very character to act in such ways: to bless those who are hurting or who are striving for righteousness; because that’s exactly what God is doing: God is also working for peace and righteousness. 

That’s the good news of the kingdom: Jesus is announcing to those who are suffering or who are serving in the kingdom that God is making his strength and his mercy generously available, with all the benefits of his grace.

How are we seeking to be the kind of people who announce what God is doing and then fulfill what God promises? How will be the people God shapes into God’s kingdom purposes?

Pastor Andy Kinsey
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Grace United Methodist Church
1300 E Adams Dr,
Franklin, IN 46131

Phone: 317-736-7962
grace@franklingrace.org

Weekend  Worship Services
Saturday: 5:30pm 
Sunday: 9:00am & 11:00am

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