An Update from Pastor Jeff

Good morning!  I just wanted to give you an update this morning.

            First, I want to thank everyone who watched our first livestreamed service Wednesday night.  It looks like quite a number of you did, and we appreciate that.  We’ll be livestreaming our Sunday morning service at 11:00 and our Sunday evening service at 7:00, and we hope you’ll watch those, too.  They’re live on our Wheatland Parish facebook page, and after they’re done I post them to my personal facebook page.  Feel free to share them with others as well.

            When will we be able to have in-person worship again?  I don’t know.  I don’t think anyone does.  We originally said we’d suspend in-person worship through the end of March.  We got an email from the Dakotas Conference yesterday that said we should continue not having in-person worship for “the next weeks”.  How long is that?  I don’t know.  I don’t think the conference knows.  That’s not a criticism—the situation is changing weekly, sometimes daily.  All I can tell you is that we’ll resume in-person worship as soon as we know it’s reasonable and safe to do so.

            Life is strange right now.  We all have to hang in there.  I recommend that you try to keep your life as normal as possible in this abnormal time.  Take reasonable precautions, of course.  But what I mean is, go to bed at your regular time, get up at your regular time, eat meals at your regular time.  Try to keep the regular rhythms of your life as much as possible.  Keeping things as normal as we can will help us feel normal in these abnormal times.

            And try to keep your sense of humor.  From what I’ve seen on facebook, a lot of you are doing a good job of that so far, and that’s good.  But the longer this goes on, the harder it’s going to be.  But we need to keep trying.  Yes, this is serious—we know it’s serious.  And I know it’s easy to say “make the best of it”.  But what’s the alternative—make the worst of it?  How’s that going to help?  Sitting around complaining and wringing our hands won’t help anything.  Washing our hands will, but wringing them won’t.  Try to keep your sense of humor intact through all of this.

            And keep your faith in God.  You know, at a time like this, we make a choice.  We either run away from God or we run toward God.  It’s your choice, but let me ask you:  if you run away from God, where are you going to go?  It reminds me of John Chapter Six, when a bunch of people turn away from Jesus.  He asks the disciples if they’re going to leave him, too.  Peter answers, “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”

            You know, this is not the first time in human history that we’ve had hard times.  Just in the last hundred years or so we’ve had two world wars and the great depression.  We’ve had societal upheaval in any number of ways.  It’s not even the first time we’ve had a pandemic.  But God has always been there and God has always seen us through it.  God will do that for us again. 

            One more thing:  keep caring for each other and finding ways to be there for each other.  Jesus’ command to love our neighbors is always important, but it’s even more important in times like this.  If we’re determined to stay together, if we’re determined to care for each other and be there for each other, we’ll find ways to do it.

            So hang in there.  Know that God is good, and God will see us through this.  Know that the church is still here for you—you can contact me by phone, by email, by text, by facebook, in all the ways you usually can contact me.  Do your best, and keep trusting God.  Thanks for watching, and have a blessed day.

A Message From Pastor Jeff

Good morning.  At the recommendation of the bishop and others, and after consultation with our church councils, we have decided to suspend in-person worship through the end of March.  We will be livestreaming our services instead.  That includes all of our services—Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening during Lent.  Also, there will be no church meetings through the end of March.

Our plan is to use facebook live and youtube for our services.  The services will be livestreamed on the Wheatland Parish facebook page.  They will then be put on youtube and also shared to my personal facebook page.  I encourage you to share them on your pages as well.  The Sunday morning service will be live at 11:00.  The Sunday evening service will be live at 7:00.  The Wednesday night Lent service will be live at 7:30.  That means that tonight, at 7:30, will be our first livestreamed service.

Please bear with us as we work through this process.  As of early Monday afternoon, we were still planning to hold our regular services, so we’re learning this livestreaming stuff on the fly, as we go.  But we will do our best to provide a meaningful worship service for you.

We hope this will only be for a couple of weeks, and we will be back to normal by April 1.  But the fact is that no one knows what’s going to happen.  For now, we will take things a week or two at a time and see how it goes.

A few more things I want to say.  One is to encourage you to continue to give to the church.  Yes, I know the cliché—all the church wants is my money.  But the fact is that the expenses of the church do not get any less just because we’re not meeting on Sunday morning.  The money you give is used for lots of things, from missions to Christian education to keeping the heat and lights on.  Donations can be sent to the church office, at 101 East Garfield, Gettysburg, South Dakota, 57442.  For those of you in Onida and Agar, if you want to send a donation directly to your church treasurer, that’s fine, too.  For those who send money to the church office, please note which church you want it to go to—Gettysburg, Onida, or Agar.  Again, the address to send donations is 101 East Garfield, Gettysburg, South Dakota, 57442.

I mentioned Christian education.  We want to continue to reach our children, even though we cannot have Sunday school or Faith Builders for a couple of weeks.  In Gettysburg, our Faith Builders teachers are working on putting together some packets you can take home for your kids.  I’ll let you know when those are ready.  But of course, it’s going to be up to you parents to see to it that the kids actually use the materials in those packets.  If there’s anything we can do to help you, please let me know.

With no public events being held for a while, it’s going to be harder for me to know what’s going on in the life of our communities.  So, I ask you to please keep me informed of any needs we have.  If someone needs a visit, or needs a phone call, or needs prayers, please let me know about that.  If you need a visit, or a phone call, or prayers, let me know about that, too.  The church office will remain open.  You can also call me, text me, send me an email, or contact me through facebook.  I remain just as accessible to you as I’ve always been.  Please let me know what’s going on.

And take care of each other.  Jesus’ command to love our neighbors does not go away, even in times like this.  In fact, in times like this it’s even more important to love our neighbors and be there for them.  Yes, it’s harder, but that just means we need to be more creative and more intentional about it.  I think that last part is the most important.  If we are intentional about being there for each other, we will find ways to do it.  Physical isolation does not have to mean emotional isolations.  Use the telephone.  Use social media.  You can even be old-fashioned and use cards and letters.  And don’t just do it once—do it repeatedly.  Elderly people who have nothing but the television for company need to hear from you.  Parents who are home with their children all day may need an adult to talk to.  Temporary physical isolation may be necessary, but God did not create us to live in isolation.  God created us to need other people.  And other people need us, too.  Let’s love each other and be there for each other.

Please pray for this entire situation.  Pray for those around you as well.  And know that we are still your church, and we are still there for you.  This, too, shall pass.  God will see us through it.   As the saying goes, everything will work out in the end, and if it’s not working out, then it’s not the end.  God is still there, and God is always faithful.  Let’s be faithful to God.  Have a good day, and I hope you’ll watch the livestream tonight at 7:30.

Looking For Chances

The message given on Sunday morning, March 15, 2020 in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish.  The Bible verses used are Luke 4:5-42.

            I want to ask you a question.  What would you say is the hardest thing about being a Christian?

            Well, it could be a lot of things, I suppose.  It could be that whole “love your enemies” thing--a lot of us struggle with that one.  It could be continuing to trust in the Lord when it seems like your life is falling apart--some of us have been there, and know that it’s not easy.  It could be the struggle of why the Lord allows so many bad things to happen in the world--that’s really hard for us to understand sometimes.  And I’m sure it would not be hard for us to think of other things, too.

            But for a lot of us, one of the hardest things about being a Christian is sharing the gospel message.  The technical word for that is “evangelism”, and just that word scares us.  It brings to mind images of TV preachers, or someone standing on a street corner shouting at people to repent and be saved.  Evangelism does not have to be that, of course.  As I said, it’s really just sharing the gospel message.  But even so, it scares us.  

            There are reasons why.  Our faith is a very personal thing.  It can be scary to open up about our faith.  What if someone does not like it?  What if someone disagrees?  What if I come off as arrogant or holier-than-thou?  

And the world discourages us from talking about our faith.  We hear this idea that the two things you should never discuss in public are politics and religion.  And yet, I hear people talking about politics all the time any more, so apparently religion is now the only thing we’re not supposed to talk about in public.  

And so we fall back on clichés.  We say, well, that’s just not a talent I have.  We say, well, I share my faith by the way I live my life.  We say, well, there are too many things about faith that I don’t understand myself.  How can I share faith with others?

And yet, we know we’re supposed to.  According to Matthew, the last instructions Jesus gave us before he ascended to heaven were for us to go and make disciples.  And he did not make it optional.  He did not say “do it if you think you have a talent for it” or “do it if you have everything about your faith figure out”.  He said do it.  Period.  It’s our mission as United Methodists, too.  The official mission statement of the United Methodist church is “to go and make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”  

We know we’re supposed to do it.  If we believe that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, then we know people’s eternal lives depend on us doing it.  And yet--we hesitate.  We feel unsure.  We feel like we don’t know how to do it.  We’re afraid people will think we’re strange if we do it.  

Now, maybe there are some here who don’t feel that.  Maybe there are some here who are really good at sharing the gospel message.  If so, that’s awesome.  Thank you.  Please keep it up.  In fact, please help some of the rest of us learn from you.  Because I have to be honest with you:  I’m not all that comfortable doing this, either.  I do it sometimes, but I miss an awful lot of chances, too, and for a lot of the reasons I’ve already given.

Maybe, if we struggle with this, our reading for today can help.  The story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.  Jesus and the disciples are traveling through Samaria on their way to Galilee.  Jesus sends the disciples into town to buy food, and he sits down by this well.  The Samaritan woman comes to the well to get water, and Jesus asks her for a drink.  The Samaritan woman basically says, how are you even talking to me?  You’re a Jewish man and I’m a Samaritan woman.  You’re not supposed to have anything to do with me.  And Jesus responds, as you heard, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

Now, we don’t know the mind of Jesus.  It’s entirely possible that Jesus planned this whole thing, that he deliberately timed his trip so that he’d be at the well when this woman got there, and that he deliberately sent the disciples away on some pretext so he could talk to this woman alone.  After all, he’s Jesus, the divine Son of God, and he could know things that it would not be possible for a mere human to know.

But there’s nothing in the Bible that indicates that.  The way this is written, this appears to be just a chance encounter.  Jesus is just resting by the well because he’s tired.  And this woman just happens to come out at this time.  And Jesus, who after all was never too concerned with social conventions and who talked all the time to people he was not “supposed” to talk to, just asks her for a drink because he’s thirsty.  Again, we don’t know, but the way the story is written, what happens does not appear to have been part of some grand plan of Jesus to find this woman and make her a disciple.

But look at what happens.  They’re having this normal conversation, and the woman gives him an opening.  She says, “How can you ask me for a drink?”  And when Jesus gets that opening, he jumps through it.  That’s when he tells her about the living water.  And that leads to the entire conversation about the water that will never let you thirst again, about her husbands, and about where to worship.  And ultimately, it leads to Jesus telling this woman, this Samaritan woman, straight out that he is the Messiah--something he rarely said to anyone.

That’s the example for us.  You and I don’t have a grand plan of going out and spreading the gospel message to anyone and everyone.  I mean, some people are called to do that, and if that’s you, that’s great.  I’m not speaking against it.  But we don’t have to do that to spread the gospel.  All we need to do is pay attention.  Pay attention during the normal conversations we have every day.  Look for an opening in the conversation to talk about our faith.  And when we get that opening, be ready to jump through it.  

It won’t happen in every conversation.  I mean, I’m not suggesting that we should start talking about Noah and the flood every time someone says it looks like rain.  But there are times when it will come up naturally.  It can be as simple as someone telling us they’re having a bad day, and us responding, “I’ll pray for you.”  It can be as simple as, instead of saying “Have a nice day”, saying “Have a blessed day.”  It can be as simple as, when someone asks you why you’re in a good mood, saying that you’re feeling God’s blessings today.

Now, of course, we can get deeper than that, too, and we should.  We don’t want to settle for just superficial statements.  But we have to start somewhere, and this is a place to start.  If we’re having trouble talking about our faith, these are simple ways we can get started doing it.  And as we get more comfortable doing these things, then we can gradually move into the deeper statements, and the deeper conversations.  But if we don’t start someplace, we’ll never get anywhere.

And the thing is, we never know where even a superficial statement might lead.  After all, Jesus started by asking someone for a drink of water.  He then saw an opening to talk about faith and took it.  That led, not just to this Samaritan woman coming to believe in Jesus, but to a whole lot of other Samaritans coming to believe in Jesus as the Savior.  All those people were saved, and it all started by Jesus asking for a drink of water.

Now, I’m not suggesting that this happened every time Jesus had a conversation with someone.  I’m sure there were many times Jesus just had regular conversations, with no faith component to them.  I’m also sure there were times when Jesus tried to take advantage of an opening in the conversation and the person he was talking to did not want to hear it.  We’re even told in the Bible of a few occasions where Jesus was talking to someone and they walked away, refusing to follow him.

But in an odd way, I always find that kind of encouraging.  If we look at that the right way, it can take the pressure of us.  If even Jesus could not get everyone to follow him, then you and I cannot expect to, either.  So if sometimes we talk about our faith, and nothing happens, we don’t need to get discouraged.  It happened to Jesus sometimes, too.  We’re in good company.

I don’t know what percentage of the time we’ll make a difference in someone’s life this way.  Maybe not very often.  But ask yourself this:  how many people would you have to bring to Christ to make this worthwhile?  How many people would need to receive eternal life to make this worth the effort?  Twenty?  Ten?  Five?  Maybe, even just one?

Again, I know that for a lot of us, this is not easy.  But Jesus told us to do a lot of things that are not easy, and this is one of them.  Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus say, “you don’t have to do this if you find it hard” or “you don’t have to do this if you don’t feel like it.”  When Jesus said to do something, he said to do it.  Period.  No exceptions given, and no excuses allowed.

It’s not easy for a lot of us.  Including me.  But we need to do it anyway.  The eternal life of someone we know may depend on it.

The Born Again Process

The message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, March 8, 2020.  The Bible verses used are John 3:1-21.

            We talk a lot about God’s Holy Spirit, and yet the Holy Spirit is probably the person of the trinity we understand the least about.  We can understand God the Father, at least to some extent.  We call Him by all sorts of titles:  the Creator, the Almighty, the Ancient of Days, on and on and on.  And we can understand Jesus--God the Son--to some extent, too.  We can picture him--I mean, I’m sure Jesus did not look like the paintings we have, but I think most of us have some sort of mental picture of Jesus, whether it’s accurate or not.  And because Jesus actually walked on the earth and had conversations with real people, it’s a lot easier for us to get our minds around who Jesus is--not totally, but again, to some extent.

            But the Holy Spirit?  What’s the Holy Spirit, exactly?  Well, it’s--it’s a Spirit.  And it’s Holy.  But what else?

            In our Bible reading for today, Jesus talks a little about the Holy Spirit.  When we read this passage, we often skip down to John Three, Sixteen.  That’s the part we like.  And we will get to that, but first, we have to deal with some of the stuff we don’t like.  And what we don’t like dealing with so much is the whole “born again” thing.  It’s harder to understand.

            But Jesus said that no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.  And then, just to make sure there was no mistake, he said that no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.  So being born again must be pretty important, and we need to deal with it.  And the way we are born again is through God’s Holy Spirit.

            One thing that people sometimes get hung up on is whether being “born again” has to be a definite, instantaneous experience or whether it can be a process that plays out over a period of time.  As United Methodists, we believe it can be either way.  There are people who have a “born again experience”, who are changed instantly by God’s Holy Spirit.  There are others for whom it happens gradually, over a period of time.

            That’s how it’s happened for me.  I cannot point to one specific time and place at which God’s Holy Spirit transformed me.  I can think of times where I’ve felt God’s Holy Spirit with me, but not in the sense of a born again experience.  For me, being born again has happened gradually, over a period of time.  And in fact, I believe it’s still happening.  I believe I’m still in the process of being born again, of being transformed, of having God’s Holy Spirit work within me.

            I hope that does not sound arrogant, because I don’t mean it to be.  I have no control over God’s Holy Spirit.  I’m not even sure I always recognize it.  I can be really good at convincing myself that I’m following God’s Holy Spirit when in fact I’m just doing what I want to do.  As Jesus says, you cannot tell where the Spirit is going to go.  All any of us can do is try to be open to God’s Holy Spirit and do our best to follow where the Spirit leads us.

            I say that, and you know, it sounds fairly simple.  And it sounds like a good thing.  After all, God’s Holy Spirit would never lead us the wrong way, right?  And of course that’s true.  The Holy Spirit never would lead us the wrong way.  But the Spirit might lead us to places we don’t want to go.  The Spirit might lead us to places that scare us.  In fact, the Spirit might lead us to places that are dangerous.  After all, look where the Holy Spirit led Jesus.  The Spirit led Jesus to the cross.

            But that’s the thing about being born again.  That’s the thing about truly being born of God’s Holy Spirit.  If we do that--if you and I fully and completely surrender ourselves to God’s Holy Spirit--we give up control over our own lives.  We go where God’s Holy Spirit takes us.  Jesus compared the Holy Spirit to the wind.  If you and I truly surrender our lives to God’s Holy Spirit, we basically become leaves being blown around by that wind.  If it’s a soft, gentle breeze, we might not get blown very far at all.  We might make a nice, gentle landing more or less where we are.  But if it’s a forty or fifty mile an hour wind, like we can get around here, we might get blown into the next county or the next state or even farther.  And we don’t know which it’s going to be.

            It is really hard to give up that much control of our lives.  It is really hard to completely surrender to God’s Holy Spirit.  I cannot say I’ve done it.  I’m not sure I’ve ever known anyone who has.  I know some who’ve come close.  But even if we try, even when we’re serious about trying to turn our lives over to God, we are really hesitant to do it completely.  We keep trying to take that control back for ourselves.  We say, “God, I’ll give you most of my life, but I’m going to keep this part for myself.  This part belongs to me.”

            That’s why I say that being born again is a process.  Even if you had a true “born again experience”, there’s an extent to which it’s still a process.  Even when we truly are born again, our sinful nature does not magically go away.  Satan does not just decide to stop working on us, either.  Satan may wait for a better time, just as he did with Jesus in the wilderness, but Satan does not give up.  That’s why we need to keep trying to get closer and closer to God’s Holy Spirit, so we have the Holy Spirit’s protection, both against Satan and against ourselves.

            But the thing is, Jesus knew that.  Jesus knew that being born again is a process.  Jesus knew the battles we were going to have to fight.  Jesus understood them better than we do.  And that’s why, after Jesus told us that we need to be born again, and after Jesus told us give our lives to God’s Holy Spirit, Jesus said those words that we love so much.  He said, “the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life through him.  For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

            When we accept Jesus as the Savior, God’s Holy Spirit comes to us.  And God’s Holy Spirit changes us.  It transforms us.  That’s really what we mean when we say we’re born again.  We are no longer the people we were before.  Are we perfect people?  No.  The only perfect person who ever walked on the earth was Jesus.  As I said, we’re still going to have to fight our sinful nature, and Satan is not going to leave us alone, either.

God, of course, is all-powerful, so God’s Holy Spirit could transform us into perfect people if God chose to do that.  But God continues to give us free will.  And that means God gives us the ability to turn away from God’s Holy Spirit and do things our own way.  And sometimes we do.  Even after we’ve accepted Jesus as the Savior, we still sometimes want to do things our own way.  God’s Holy Spirit may come to us, but sometimes we fight against the Spirit.

God understands that, too, of course.  But even so, when we accept Jesus as the Savior, and when God’s Holy Spirit transforms us, we are different people.  Because now, we’re God’s people.  

Listen to this part.  We don’t talk about this part so much, but this is verses twenty and twenty-one:  “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.  But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”

There are a lot of things we can take out of those verses, but one of them is that when we accept Jesus as the Savior, we come into the light.  What we do is seen plainly.  It’s done in the sight of God.  That does not mean that everything we do will be pure and perfect.  There will still be times when we’ll do what we want to do and try to justify what we’ve done.  But once we accept Jesus as the Savior, we stop trying to hide what we’ve done.  We especially stop trying to hide it from God.  Again, we may try to justify it.  We may even try to argue with God about it.  But we’re not trying to hide it.  We admit to God who we are and what we’ve done.  We will live honestly “living by the truth”.  And when God’s Holy Spirit makes it clear that what we’ve done was wrong, we’ll acknowledge that, ask for forgiveness, and start again.

When we accept Jesus as the Savior, God’s Holy Spirit comes to us and changes us.  It transforms us.  We no longer feel that we have to hide who we are.  We can live by the truth, confident in who God is and in who we are in relation to God.  And, over time, we can truly be born again.

The Main Thing

This is the message from the Wednesday night Lent service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on March 4, 2020.  The Bible verses used are Mark 1:  29-45.

            All of us have a lot of aspects to our lives, right?  We all have a lot of titles that could be applied to us.  Take me, for example.  I’m a pastor.  I’m a husband.  I’m a son.  I’m a sports fan.  I’m a musician, kind of.  I’m a public address announcer.  Those and lots of other titles could be used to describe me.  And you can think of similar things that would describe you.

            Jesus had a lot of titles, too, when he was on the earth.  We’re going to look at a few of them in these Wednesday night Lent services.  The one we’re going to look at tonight is “Healer”.  Jesus was a healer.

            The thing is that what we tend to emphasize, when we speak of Jesus as a healer, is his physical healing.  And that seems to be what people emphasized while he was on earth, too.  In our reading for tonight we’re told that he cured a fever from Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, and that evening a whole bunch of people brought their sick relatives and friends to Jesus.  A little later we’re told of a man with leprosy who was brought to Jesus and Jesus healed him.  And once again, people started bringing all their sick to Jesus, so much so that he could not even go into towns because of the uproar he’d cause.  He stayed outside, out in the wilderness, and yet people still came from all around to have Jesus heal them.

            And when we pray for Jesus to heal someone, that’s usually what we do, too, right?  I’ve done it myself, many times.  I’ve done it in hospitals and in homes.  I’ve done it here in the pulpit.  I’ve prayed for the physical healing of many, many people over the years.  And I’m not saying that’s wrong--I intend to continue to do that.

            But the thing is that even though physical healing is what we tend to emphasize, and it’s what our reading tonight emphasizes, too, it’s not the only kind of healing there is.  It’s not even necessarily the most important.  And our reading for tonight recognizes that.  It may emphasize the physical healing, but it also mentions something else.  It came pretty fast--you might even have missed it--but it’s mentioned twice.  First, in verse thirty-four, it says, “he also drove out many demons”.  And later, in verse thirty-nine, it refers to Jesus “preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons”.

            Now, I don’t know what you think about the whole idea of demon-possession.  It is in the Bible, and it’s all over the gospels, so I don’t think we can just dismiss it.  My point for tonight, though, is that when Jesus healed someone, he did not just heal them physically.  Jesus healed them in every way.  He healed them mentally.  He healed them emotionally.  He healed them psychologically.  And he healed them spiritually.  

And that last kind of healing is probably the most important kind of healing of all.  The old saying, of course, is that if you have your health, you have just about everything.  But that’s not really true.  I could be in perfect physical condition--I mean, I’m not, obviously, but I could be--but if I did not know Jesus as the Savior, my great physical condition would do me no good whatsoever.  I could be the most emotionally stable person you ever met--but if I did not know Jesus as the Savior, it would be meaningless.  

Right now, the big physical health scare is the coronavirus.  And don’t take this the wrong way, I’m all for people taking reasonable precautions.  They say the best thing we can do is wash our hands regularly and thoroughly, and I’m certainly all for everyone doing that.  And of course, the government should do what it can to develop cures and vaccines and everything.  I’m not suggesting that we should just ignore the coronavirus and hope it goes away.  I don’t think we need to be in a panic over it, but we do need to take it seriously.

But I find it interesting.  The last I saw, they were estimating that there have been around three thousand deaths worldwide from the coronavirus, and yet it seems to be all anyone’s talking about.  But at the same time, surveys show that nearly thirty percent of the United States population is non-Christian.  That’s over ninety-six million people.  If we believe what Jesus said, that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, then that’s over ninety-six million people, just in the United States, who are spiritually dead.  We probably have more spiritual dead people just in the state of South Dakota than have died all over the world from the coronavirus.  And yet we hardly ever talk about that.  And when we do talk about it, our response usually is just to throw up our hands and say there’s nothing we can do about it.

Now again, don’t get me wrong here.  I’m at least as guilty of this anyone.  But let me ask you--do you think Jesus is happy with that response?  Do you think Jesus is happy when our response to that many spiritually dead people is to throw up our hands and say there’s nothing we can do about it?  Or do you think, maybe, Jesus wants and expects a little more from us than that?

Now, I don’t think Jesus expects you and me to go to those ninety-six million people and bring them to Christ.  I mean, even Jesus did not heal everyone who was sick while he was on earth.  He does not expect us to do that, either.

But what did Jesus do?  He did what he could.  When you look at Jesus’ healing, for the most part he did not go and seek out sick people and heal them.  But when God gave him the chance to heal someone, he took it.  And again, Jesus did not settle for just providing physical healing.  He provided healing in every way.  And he especially provided spiritual healing.  After all, remember what he said to people so many times after healing them?  He would say something like, “Your faith has made you well.  Now go and sin no more.”  Jesus did not just want people to be physically healed.  He wanted them to have faith in him as the Savior and he wanted them to live lives that showed that faith.

            That’s what the Lord expects us to do--take advantage of the chances we’re given to help people and when we get those chances, we should not settle for just helping them physically.  We need to try to bring them to faith in Jesus Christ as well.

You hear a lot--and you especially hear a lot in the United Methodist church--about the church’s role in bringing about social justice.  And the church does have a role in that, I’m not trying to say it does not.  But if the church stops there, the church has failed.  Stopping there would be the same as Jesus stopping at physical healing.  Just as spiritual healing was important to Jesus, it needs to be equally important to us.  After all, the last words of Jesus on earth, as recorded in the gospel of Matthew, were not, “Go and bring about social justice”.  They were “go and make disciples.”  Again, it’s good to make people’s lives better on earth.  But if we make people’s lives better on earth, and do not bring them to Jesus Christ for eternal life, we have failed.  

These things do not have to be an either/or, of course.  The church can and should be involved in both.  But we also need to know where our main emphasis lies, just as Jesus knew where his main emphasis lay.

Jesus could have spent his entire life on earth bringing physical healing to people.  I don’t suppose he’d ever have run out of people who needed physical healing.  After all, we’re told that people came from everywhere, looking for healing for themselves and their loved ones.  If Jesus had done that, everyone would’ve said that Jesus had done wonderful, amazing things.  Jesus could have spent his life on earth that way--but if he had, he would not have been doing what God the Father wanted him to do.  Jesus did not come to make people feel better.  Jesus came to offer us a way to salvation and eternal life.  And that’s still the offer that Jesus makes.

And, if we call ourselves Christians, that’s the offer Jesus wants us to make, too.  Now, you and I cannot bring someone to salvation.  We cannot give anyone eternal life.  None of us is the divine Son of God.  We cannot bring someone to salvation--but we can lead them to the one who can.  We cannot give anyone eternal life--but we can lead them to the one who can.  That’s what Jesus expects us to do.

            Helping people with their physical needs was important to Jesus.  It was a major part of his ministry.  And helping people with their physical needs should be important to the church, too.  It should be a major part of our ministry, too.  

            But Jesus was not sent to earth by God the Father to save physical lives.  He was sent here to offer salvation and eternal life.  The church does not exist primarily to save physical lives, either.  Again, I’m not saying we should ignore people physical needs--Jesus did not ignore them, and we should not either.  But the primary goal of the church is to bring people to Jesus Christ, so they can accept his offer of salvation and eternal life.  That offer is worth more than all the physical healing in the world.

God Knows Best

The message from the Sunday night service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on March 1, 2020.  The Bible verses used are Genesis 2:15-17, 3:  1-7.

            The comedienne Lily Tomlin once said that humans developed language to satisfy our deep inner need to complain.

            There may be truth in that because it’s undeniable that human beings love to complain.  It does seem to be part of our nature.  No matter what’s going on, we’re never satisfied.  Things are never quite right.  They’re never quite good enough.  We always want more.  We always want better.  It’s just the way we are.

            Now, it could be argued that there’s an upside to that.  After all, much of what we call progress has come out of a desire to want more, or to want better.  Many of our greatest inventions have come because we wanted a better, easier way to do things.

            But there’s a downside to it, too.  This feeling that things are never right, that they’re never good enough, can keep us from appreciating what we have.  We cannot just be happy to be what we are and to have what we have.  We always feel like we’re missing something, like there has to be something better out there, and that we cannot be happy until we get whatever that something is.

            That’s one of the lessons we can take from our reading from Genesis tonight.  God had put human beings in paradise.  Literally, paradise.  Adam and Eve had everything they could ever need.  They had peace.  They had joy.  They had happiness.  They had each other.  What else could anyone want?

            Well, what they wanted was the one thing God had told them they were not supposed to have.  And is that not just like human beings?  If we’re told we cannot have one thing, that one thing is the only thing we want.  It’s the only thing we can think about.  It’s sort of like if you told me I cannot have pork chops.  I don’t eat pork chops very often, but if you told me I could never have them again, all of a sudden they’d be all I could think about.  I’d want them all the time.

And that’s how Adam and Eve were with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Now, maybe you say, hey, wait a minute.  They did not get tempted to eat from the fruit of that tree until the serpent started telling them about it.  And there’s truth in that.  But at the same time, if they had not been thinking about that tree, if they had not been thinking about how cool it would be to eat some of that fruit, what the serpent said would’ve had no effect on them, right?  I mean, no matter how great you told me life would be if I started eating Brussels sprouts regularly, I would not be tempted to do it, because I don’t like Brussels sprouts.  You can only tempt someone to do something if they’re already thinking it’d be cool to do it.

            That’s how the serpent was with Adam and Eve.  And that’s how evil attacks us, too.  It hits us at our weak points.  It hits us on things that, on some level, we’d really like to do anyway.  And it tells us, oh, go ahead.  It won’t hurt anybody.  Nobody’s going to know.  And if they did, nobody’s going to care.  It’s not really bad.  Just go ahead and do it.  Whatever “it” happens to be.

            That’s what the serpent said to Adam and Eve.  Go ahead.  Eat the fruit.  It won’t hurt anybody.  Nobody will know.  It’s not really bad.  Just go ahead and do it.  

Adam and Eve had everything they needed.  But they were not satisfied with it.  They wanted more.  And by wanting more, they ended up losing what they had.

            But think about this:  why did Adam and Eve want more?  Why were they not satisfied with what they had?  Why did they desire the one thing that God had told them they could not have, rather than being grateful for the hundreds and thousands of things that God had given them?

            It comes down to a matter of trust, really.  Adam and Eve did not understand why God would tell them they could not have this one thing.  And when the serpent gave them a reason, they accepted that reason.

            Think about what that reason was.  The serpent basically told Adam and Eve that the reason God would not let them have that one thing was because God was trying to keep something from them.  God was trying to keep them down.  God was preventing them from being what they could be.  If they just stopped listening to God, and what they wanted to do, they’d be so much better off.

            And they believed it.  That’s sad, isn’t it?  God had given them so much.  Again, God had given them everything they would ever need.  But despite that, they could not trust God.  They could not believe that God must have a good reason for not wanting them to eat the fruit of that one tree.  When the serpent told them God’s reasons were not good at all, they believed him.

            And that’s just like human beings, too, isn’t it?  God gives us so much.  God gives us everything we could ever need.  And yet, if God tells us we’re not supposed to have something, we have a hard time trusting God.  We have a hard time believing that God must have a good reason for telling us we’re not supposed to have things.  And when someone tells us, or when we tell ourselves, that God’s reasons are not good at all, we believe it.

            You know, contrary to popular belief, there are not a whole lot of things in the Bible that God has told us not to do.  And when God does tell us not to do certain things, there are reasons.  It’s not because God is trying to keep something from us.  It’s not because God is trying to keep us down or keep us from being what we could be.  It’s because God understands life better than we do.  And God knows we’ll be happier if we live our lives God’s way rather than living them our own way.

            I said that it comes down to trust, and it does, but it comes down to something else, too.  Why do we have trouble trusting God?  Because of our arrogance.  We don’t want to accept that God knows better than we do.  We don’t want to accept that anyone knows better than we do.  After all, nobody has a right to tell ME what to do.  I’ll do whatever I want.  And we do.

            I suspect you’ve done that at times.  I know I have.  When you did, how’d it work out for you?  It sure has never worked out for me.  It may have seemed like it did, for a little while.  When Adam and Eve first ate the fruit, they probably thought it was going to work out for them, too.  Hey, we know all this stuff we did not know before!  It was only later, when they had to accept the consequences for what they’d done, that they found out that doing things their own way was not going to work out for them at all.

            You know, arrogance is one of those sins we don’t talk about a whole lot.  And yet it’s all over the Bible.  It may be the sin that the Bible talks about the most.  The desire to do things our own way.  The belief that--whether we’d ever put it this way or not--that we know more than God.  The feeling that God’s rules are old-fashioned, that they’re a relic of the past.  Those rules were written thousands of years ago--they don’t apply today.  They certainly don’t apply to ME.  I’m a free human being.  I can do whatever I want.  Who is God to tell me what to do?  Who is anybody to tell me what to do?

And the thing is, God will let us do that.  God will let us act out of our arrogance.  God will allow us to ignore God and do things our own way. 

            But think how God must feel when we do.  I don’t have any children, of course, but I often think that one of the hardest things about being a parent is when you see your child making decisions, going down a road, and you just know that it’s not going to work out well for them.  You know that the decisions they’re making, the road they’re going down, is only going to lead to sadness.  And yet, there’s nothing you can do about it.  All you can do is let them know you still love them, and be there to pick up the pieces when it falls apart as you know that it’s going to.

            I suspect that’s how God feels about us, many, many times.  God sees the decisions we make.  God sees the road we’re going down.  And God knows that what we’re doing is not going to work out well for us.  But God does not stop us.  What God does, though, is continue to love us.  And God will be there to pick up the pieces when things fall apart.

            But how much easier, how much better our lives would be if we just listened to God in the first place?  How much easier, how much better our lives would be if we put aside our arrogance?  How much easier, how much better our lives would be if we stopped insisting on doing things our way and instead started doing things God’s way?

            Yes, God has given us rules for living.  But not because God is trying to keep us down or keep anything from us.  God gave us rules for living because God loves us.  So let’s put aside our arrogance and start living our lives God’s way.  Let’s trust God, because God always knows best.

Resisting Temptation

The message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday morning, March 1, 2020.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 4:1-11.

            We pray the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday.  I’m sure most of us can recite it from memory.  Now, the Lord’s Prayer is a wonderful prayer, and I’m certainly not going to suggest we stop using it.  But at the same time, because we say it every week, because we’re so familiar with it, I suspect there are times when, during the Lord’s Prayer, our minds wander a little bit.  We start to think about other things.  We’re still saying the words, but we’re not really thinking about what we’re saying.  

            Now, please don’t hear that as a criticism.  Or, if it is, it’s as much a criticism of myself as it is of anyone else, because I’ve done that, too.  It’s just human nature, really.  It’s the same thing when we recite the Pledge of Allegiance or anything else that we’ve said that many times.  We just do it without thinking about it anymore.

            I bring this up because there are ten words from the Lord’s Prayer that fit in well with our reading for today.  We don’t always think of them as being connected, but they are.  “Lead us not into temptation”, and “but deliver us from evil.”

            Those are really important words.  “Lead us not into temptation.”  Why is that so important?  Because temptation is really hard to resist, right?  If it was not, it would not be temptation.  We cannot be tempted to do something that we don’t want to do, at least on some level.  I cannot be tempted to eat spinach, because I don’t want to eat spinach.  I don’t like spinach.  I can be tempted to eat ice cream, because I really want to eat ice cream.  

            And in this context, temptation is something that we really want to do but we know we should not do.  That’s the other reason we cannot be tempted to eat spinach--eating spinach is a good thing to do.  We can be tempted to eat ice cream, because eating ice cream is not a good thing to do.  Don’t get me wrong--I’m not saying eating ice cream is sinful or anything.  But I think we all recognize that it’s not the healthiest thing in the world to eat.

            But it sure tastes good.  And that’s the other thing about temptation.  The thing we’re tempted to do will be really enjoyable--in the short term.  I would really enjoy that ice cream.  I would enjoy getting it in the spoon.  I would enjoy putting it in my mouth.  I would enjoy it as I swallowed it.  I would enjoy it as it went into my stomach.  In the short term, I would love that ice cream.  It’s only in the long term, when I saw my weight going up, when my clothes did not fit right anymore, that I would realize the price I was paying for giving in to that temptation.

            And so, we look at the ways Jesus was tempted.  He had fasted for forty days and forty nights.  And the devil tells him, hey, you know, you don’t have to be hungry.  You’re Jesus.  You’re the divine Son of God.  Why not just turn those stones into bread?

            Was that something Jesus wanted to do, at least on some level?  Probably--he was hungry.  Was it something he knew he should not do?  Yes--he knew the time had not yet come for him to do things like that, and he also knew that he was not supposed to use his divine power just to serve himself.  But would it have been enjoyable, in the short term?  You bet.  After forty days with nothing to eat, bread probably sounded like the best thing in the world to Jesus.

            He did not give in, of course, and we’ll come back to that.  But then the devil took Jesus to the highest spot on the temple.  He says, hey, throw yourself down from here.  You’re Jesus.  You’re the divine Son of God.  The angels will catch you.  Go for it!

            Did Jesus want to do that, at least on some level?  Probably.  It sure would’ve been a good way to get everyone to believe.  People seeing him survive jumping off the temple, and in fact not just survive but bounce right up without a scratch on him.  Only the Messiah could do that, right?  Word would’ve spread all over.  Was it something he knew he should not do?  Yes--as Jesus says, we are not supposed to test God.  But would it have been enjoyable, in the short term?  Sure it would.  Think of how that would feel, to be able to do something like that!

            Jesus did not do it, of course.  So the devil takes Jesus to a high mountain.  He shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.  And he says to Jesus, “I’ll give you all this if you’ll worship me.”

            Now, I’m not suggesting that Jesus wanted to bow down and worship Satan.  But the offer of the kingdoms of the world--well, did Jesus want to rule all those kingdoms, at least on some level?  Maybe.  After all, think of all the good he could’ve done.  He could’ve ended poverty, oppression, injustice, all kinds of things.  He could’ve made the world as it should be.  But was it something he knew he should not do?  Yes.  The day will come when Jesus comes again and establishes the kingdom, but the time for it was not then.  But would it have been enjoyable, at least in the short term?  Yes.  To be able to do all that would’ve been awesome.

            But again, Jesus resisted.  And that brings us to the other words of the Lord’s Prayer that we’re looking at:  “but deliver us from evil”.

            We recognize that the things Jesus was tempted to do were evil because they came from the devil.  Anything the devil tempts us to do is pretty much evil by definition.  But, is evil really involved in everything we’re tempted to do?  You might say no--but think about it.  We’ve already said that the things we’re tempted to do are things we should not do.  That means they’re not good things.  Well, if something is not good, what is it?  It’s evil, right?  What other choice is there?

            Maybe you say, well, but some things are not really good or evil.  They’re just neutral.  Well, maybe.  But if we’re doing things that we would call neutral, by definition that takes our time, our effort, our focus away from doing things that are good.  And that’s one of the ways that evil attacks us.  Evil does not always attack us by trying to get us to do things that are clearly wrong, like murder or stealing or things like that.  If it did, it would be a lot easier to resist--most of us are not killers or thieves and don’t have any desire to be.  Evil attacks us by telling us, “Oh, go ahead.  It won’t hurt anyone.  Nobody’ll know the difference anyway.  Besides, it’s not really wrong.  Just do it.”  We pray for God to deliver us from evil because evil can be really persuasive.  

            But here’s the thing:  God may not lead us to temptation, but quite often we lead ourselves there, because the thing we’re tempted to do will be so enjoyable in the short term.  And God may want to deliver us from evil, but quite often we refuse to be delivered, because we really want to do the thing we know we should not do.  So what do we do?

            Well, what did Jesus do?  Each time Jesus was tempted by the devil, Jesus quoted scripture.  Jesus said to the devil, you’re not going to get me to do something I know I should not do, because I know the will of God the Father.  I know what God wants me to do, and it’s not what you’re trying to get me to do.  So I’m not going to do it.

            Now, does that mean we should all go home and memorize scripture so we can resist temptation?  Well, it would not hurt anything.  There are certainly worse ways you could spend the afternoon.  But no, I don’t think it means that.  Here’s what I do think it means, though.

            It means, for one thing, that we need to be prepared.  We need to be prepared to fight temptation and be delivered from evil.  Jesus was able to resist the temptations of the devil because he was ready for them.  Jesus was not taken by surprise by anything the devil did or said.  You and I need to be ready, too.  We need to know what we’re going to say or do when we’re tempted, so we don’t stumble simply because we’re caught by surprise.

            And it also means we need to stay close to God.  Jesus was not just pulling random scripture quotes out of the air.  Jesus was quoting the right scriptures at the right time.  He was able to do that because he knew God’s will.  And he did not just know God’s will in a general sense.  He knew God’s will for him, personally.  He knew why he was here and what he was supposed to do.  He knew that because he was close to God.

            Do you know God’s will?  Do you know God’s will for you, personally?  Do you know why you’re here and what you’re supposed to do?

            If not, again, don’t take that as a criticism.  It’s not always an easy thing to know.  Some people go their whole lives not knowing it.  But we should try.  And the only way I know to do that is through prayer.

            Jesus spent a lot of time in prayer.  You and I probably need to spend more time in prayer, too.  I say “probably” because I don’t know how much time you spend in prayer.  I don’t doubt there are people here who spend more time in prayer than I do.  But I’d encourage us all to try to spend more.  And when we do, ask God about this.  Ask God what God’s will is for you, personally.  Ask God why you’re here and what you’re supposed to do.

            And then try to hear God’s response.  It may or may not come in words.  But if we pray this, and if we pray it sincerely and consistently, and if we keep our eyes and our ears and our hearts open, I’m pretty sure God will give us a response.  And once we have that response, we’ll be much better able to resist temptation and to stay away from evil.

            “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”.  That’s not just words we say.  It’s a lifestyle we need to acquire.  And if we spend time with God, we’ll be able to acquire it.  We will stay away from temptation and have more time to do good.  We’ll be following the example of Jesus Christ.  And there’s no better example we can follow than that.