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On a Roll with Daniel - Daniel 1:5-11

6/28/2022

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Can food can tell us about our ultimate allegiance to God? It is a great question, if we remember that when we read Daniel, we remember that Daniel is in Exile. He is not on his home turf, and he dealing with a foreign king. As we have shared before, the Exile is the watershed event in Israel’s history. Nothing is ever the same after the Exile when Israel goes into captivity.

Second, the Exile is a tragedy par excellence, prompting the prophets of Israel like Jeremiah and Ezekiel to ask a series of difficult questions: such as, has God abandoned us? How is it possible to be faithful to God when we have lost it all? Will there ever be a day when life will return to normal? 

The book of Daniel addresses these questions and looks to help people who are disoriented, dislocated, and disillusioned. It seeks to ask the question that we asked two weeks ago, what is God up to? What does it mean to trust God in a day when no one else is living out that trust, when allegiance to the God of Israel has fallen on hard times, even among God’s people? In Exile, Israel is down to a faithful few – to a remnant. Are we?

That’s Daniel’s situation: he is away from home, in a land he doesn’t like, with a ruler who wants to pressure him to go against his faith and conscience.  

To be sure, this all might sound odd, of how faith and food come together. But if we understand how allegiance to God is symbolized by food, we can realize something very important when Nebuchadnezzar offers Daniel the royal rations: Will he eat what Nebuchadnezzar gives him or not? Where does Daniel’s true allegiance lie? Daniel has a choice to make. He can eat the defiled food of the king and become unhealthy, or they can eat their own vegetables and remain healthy.

It seems like a clear choice. But it is also a choice that comes in many different ways, each and every day? How do we share our faith in God when others do not? How will we offer ourselves to God’s purposes when others go a different way? There is always a challenge to live according to God’s faithfulness.

Pastor Andy Kinsey

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God is Good - 1 Kings 17:8-16

6/20/2022

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You know how the saying goes:I say “God is good” you say, “all the time.”  And “all the time,”  “God is good.” 

How do you know?  When you look at our world.  When you see the trials, pain, and challenges in your own life or in the life of others, how do you know? What does that mean for our understanding of the nature of God?  How can you trust that indeed God is good?

I have struggled with that little saying myself because if we are honest, it is hard to see how God is good sometimes.  When children suffer.  When war breaks out.  When our family members are in pain.  When our friends struggle with anything from infertility, job loss, and broken relationships, to financial stress, tragedy, or the loss of their own child,  It doesn’t make sense.  How is God good?  I wonder if any of you have struggled to truly embrace, believe, and put your trust in knowing that God is good.  

It wasn’t until I came to understand and reframe that little saying, and say, “yes, God works for good in all things all the time and all the time God works for good in all things.”

The story of the prophet Elijah helps us understand the goodness of God.  1 Kings 17 continues the story of a long line of corrupt and evil kings in Israealite history.  King Ahab was one of them and ruled for twenty-three years.  He was an Israealite King but he married a non-Israealite woman who practiced the religion of Baal worship.  Baal was known as the god of fertility and also called the lord of rain and dew.  Ahab and Jezebel perpetuated a culture of a tumultuous, free-for-all, polytheistic, believe what you want to believe but you better believe what the king, or in this case, what the king’s wife believes kind of atmosphere.  Where honor and shame rule.  Where position meant power.  Money meant status.  Connections meant control.  And the more you have of any of those, the more secure your position in society, the more authority and influence you have over those with less, those who are outcast, deemed unworthy, and those who live on the margins of mainline society. 

Enter Elijah, whose name means, “Yahweh is my God.”  Elijah goes to King Ahab with a word and warning from God.  He basically tells the King, you are not God, you do not have the power or authority of Yahweh God.  He tells Ahab that there was no reality except the God of Israel, stressing that no matter how many other gods you put your trust, there is but one God above all and in that God is where your trust shall be.  

It was the following statement however, that pushed Ahab over the edge: “As surely as God lives, the God of Israel before whom I stand in obedient service, the next years are going to see a total drought…” (17:1) That did not sit well with the king who worshiped a god of rain and dew. The Spirit of God tells Elijah to get out of town for his own safety.  

That is where things change for Elijah.  This bold, courageous, spirit-filled, nothing will stop me prophet, now must learn that he too must completely trust that God is good and will provide and protect him in surprising ways..  He learns this in the most unexpected way, through the actions of a widow, who doesn’t even believe in Yahweh God.   She is a nobody with no standing, worth, or significance in that society.  She was not an Israelite, but a foreigner. In other other words, God's command to Elijah sends the faithful prophet to receive nourishment from outside all the expected and predictable places of well-being.  (Brueggeman 81). 

What does this tell us?  What does it take to trust God?  Strength?  Status? Answers? Influence?  Power?  Highly developed spiritual formation and discipleship skills and practices?  None of that.  To trust God takes vulnerability.  

Who are the most vulnerable among us?  In Elijah’s day it was orphans, widows, and strangers (foreigners).  Both the widow and Elijah are vulnerable in this interaction.  Out of her vulnerability, she provides food, water, and a place to stay for this stranger.  From Elijah’s vulnerability, he experiences the faithfulness of God even in the toughest of times and in unexpected circumstances.  Elijah is sent by the Lord to depend on the gifts and resources of a “nobody.”  

What is happening here is that God is doing what God does best: breaking into our ways of thinking, challenging our ways of doing, and turning on end, our ways of being with the purpose of using the absolute unexpected to show us we can depend on God no matter what.  To show us even when we think we know, there is more to learn.  To show us that God’s goodness is made known through our courageous acts of vulnerability. 

God works for good in all things, all the time.  All The time, God works for good in all things. May we have the courage to trust such truth.  Amen
​

Pastor Jenothy Irvine
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On a Roll with God: It's Not That Hard - Exodus 16:1-7

6/14/2022

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Does anyone actually like the feeling of being lost?  I know I don’t like the feeling you get when traveling and you take a wrong turn or have to make a detour and regardless of how many “re-routes” you get from Siri, you end up somewhere you shouldn’t.   Or the feeling you get when visiting someplace new and you get turned around or misread the directions and find yourself surrounded by unfamiliar buildings, unknown street names, and the faces of strangers.  

There is a moment when you are lost in which you feel the panic in your gut begin to rise up against the rational voice in your head.  In that moment, a hundred things can go through your mind and heart.  It is a moment you have to fight to stay in control of your emotions and your imagination.  It is a moment you have to work through the fear, anger, questions, and frustrations, and work toward finding your next best step.    

What if the wilderness is not trees and rocks, or mountains and rivers? What if it is not an unfamiliar neighborhood or a strange city.  What if it is a wilderness of another kind?  The kind you can’t always see or define or wrap your mind around.  Are the feelings the same?  What can we learn from a wilderness we cannot name?  When I look at our world today, I wonder if we, as a society, aren't a bit lost and trying to find our way.  I wonder if the last two years haven't thrown us off course and into a kind of personal, social, cultural, or even global wilderness.  Professionals agree that the last two years only exacerbated underlying issues in our society and our world.  Many believe the pandemic shook an already faulty foundation exposing long-hidden cracks and weak spots within systems of government, healthcare, education, and religious institutions.  Emotions have been raw and all over the map.  Politics heated.  Conflict elevated.  And even on local levels and in the homes of our neighbors, stress has been heightened, finances stretched even farther than before, and all the struggle, neglect, abuse, and tension that comes with such circumstances has only increased.  From within this wilderness, all of us, at one level or another, have felt the fall out and results of  change, fatigue, controversy, conflict, transition, frustration, and anger.  

It is safe to say that many people today feel lost.  And if they don’t feel lost, they feel our government or our country, in general, is lost.  And if they don’t feel our government or our country is lost, they feel like something has been lost; something they might not be able to name or define or even recognize but something they know is gone. 

The story found in Exodus 16 illustrates the powerful presence of God in the wilderness with God’s people.  It reveals the faithfulness of God in times of trial and tribulation as well as God’s abundance when all we see is scarcity and God’s provision when all we feel is empty. 

The thing about this wilderness experience and every wilderness experience the people of God encountered, then and now is that a wilderness experience is a time of transition - a time of existing in between something and something else.  The Isrealites were between a life of bondage and a life of freedom.  Between despair and hope.  Between what was known and what was unknown.  Between a secure existence even though it was slave labor and persecution at the hand of Pharoah, and an apparent insecure existence at the hand of God.  They were between doubt and trust.  Fear and courage.  There is but one thing the people of God had to do and they simply could not do it.  Trust. TRUST.  The people of God, then and now, are faced with the question and task of whether or not they would trust God in the midst of their wilderness; in the midst of the struggle and discomfort that comes with navigating the in between.  

This day (and every day) demands that those who follow Jesus trust him; trust God.  The question to ask is not what are we doing or what’s going to happen?  It is not where do we go from here?  Or how long is it going to take?   The question to ask and keep asking is, “What is God up to and how are we a part of it?”  When we have the courage to ask this question, we begin to let go of our plans and assumptions and become more aware of what God is revealing to us in the midst.  When we find the discipline to ask this question, we learn to surrender our expectations and demands and look for what God is bringing about in our midst.  When we have the endurance to ask the question “what is God up to and how are we a part of it” we begin to see the wilderness as an opportunity, not as punishment, failure, or separation from God.  Our eyes are more open to see God’s presence and restoration in action. To see God’s healing unfold.  To see God’s provision, promise, and our potential in God come alive.  

Whether it is the wilderness of self, faith, pain, new beginnings, grief, change, divorce, addiction, mental health or any number of other moments of life, the question remains, “what is God up to and how are we a part of it?” 

In Exodus 16:1-7t, God provided the mana, the bread, in the wilderness but the people had a responsibility and instructions to pick it up - to accept it, to use it, to allow it to sustain them.  To trust what they were given and that it was enough.  God provided quail but the people had a responsibility and instructions to prepare and cook it, to use it for good and not abuse it or overuse it, but to trust what they were given and that it was adequate.  

People of God, hear the good news: when we are lost in the wilderness God provides.  When we are lost in the chaos of our world, God sustains.  When we are just plain lost, God knows right where we are.  

Will You trust such good news?  May it be so. 

AMEN

Pastor Jenothy Irvine
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The Prodigal Spirit - Acts 2:1-13

6/7/2022

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On Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit comes as the Prodigal Spirit, there is a lavish or extravagant love poured out upon the disciples, with new life, new power, new energy, new understanding, and new embrace –all to undo the deadly effects of the Tower of Babel. Remember that it was in the story of the Towel of Babel where people who thought they had godlike power tried to unify everyone under one imperial language and culture, but God opposed such uniformity and voted for diversity in language and culture. 

Pentecost is the Spirit’s answer to reverse that uniformity, or that moment when God sends a message about what true power, and communication, and presence mean. 


First, power in that we do not control the Spirit; no, the Spirit blows where the Spirit wills. We cannot put God into our own political boxes.


Second, it is about communication in that Pentecost is about how people from different backgrounds communicate and understand each other. One of the miracles of Pentecost is that people communicated with each other in their own language (Acts 2:5). Think about that: think about how, at any time, when we understand each other, even in our own language, a miracle is taking place. That is one of the gifts of the Spirit.


Third: Pentecost is about presence: We are not the generators of the Spirit. God is. We are not the creators of the church. The Spirit is. The Spirit comes as a presence that is recognizable and perceptible, as we see the life-giving effects of God’s Presence in our lives.


​How may we live into and receive from the Spirit of Pentecost? How may we open our lives to the embrace of the Spirit’s love and then return that love in our lives to others? What is the Spirit up to these days?

​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 
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