A Radical Methodical Teacher

Let Me Tell You a Story about a Radical and Methodical Teacher

Luke 16: 1-13 NRSV

This is the world of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Well, last Sunday I talked about how through Christ we have meaning in our lives. We are able to be and do so much through Christ. But we have to get pass our own idiosyncrasies and progressively do what we need to do to make our world better. Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That’s what we say when the pray the Lord’s Prayer.

When we make mistakes we do step out of the will of God. That is a given, but the reality of a situation is that God genuinely has a tendency to be infinite in mercy, but we don’t. When people make mistakes, people don’t run to get to the bottom of a situation, they just begin to condemn. People begin to throw stones. But if you make time to find an adequate and peaceful solution first, then that’s always the better of the two. It’s always better to do that than to cause confusion.

I made a huge mistake a few weeks ago before Women’s Day, and in front of everybody here, I’m going to apologize and tell you about the situation from another point of view. I went through a tragic situation with my mother before coming back to church for choir rehearsal. And if a neighbor hadn’t have intervened my with mom, the situation would have been a disaster. I am being very prayerful because I don’t want my mom to ever be in a nursing home. I have to prevent that as long as possible. You can say that I went through an emotional storm that led me to that moment in time, but needless to say that the situation was not handled in a godly manner on both sides. But when we are quick to condemn and judge people, we do huge disservice to ourselves. When we lie on one another, it breaks God’s heart because we’re supposed to be brothers and sisters united in Christ.

I deeply apologize to the ladies for my indiscretion. And if you do have the forgiveness of God in your hearts, then I am asking for your forgiveness.

This is a new day. This is the day that the Lord has made and we need to rejoice this morning because Lord saw fit for us to see another day. Somebody say thank you Lord. I mean say it like you mean it… from the depths of soul say “Thank you Lord!”, and like Miss Anita always says in her welcome, we only get this day – this moment, and we need to make sure that from this day forward we are the church that is a vision of hope, peace, and spiritual renewal. Rev. Dunn knows that he left a wonderful legacy with that Mission and Vision statement. We should be anticipating the Revival more and more these days. We should allow for the spirit to come and work and move in our lives when we experience this. I believe that it’s gonna be wonderful. The Worship Committee has done a superb job with preparations for the event and the rest of the members of the congregation need to support that. It’s alright if it’s more members from other churches here, but we need to boldly represent who we are at McCabe with a strong membership showing. If you need a ride, call someone. We’ll come and get you. We would hate for you to miss out. Amen! Because I know that it’s gonna be awesome!

And while we are anticipating the blessing that we will receive from the Revival, let’s take a take a look at who we are. I wasn’t sure if Shemar and Turtle was gonna be in church Sunday, but I was determined to do the sermon anyway because from this day forward, I pray that we are a united congregation of Christians that attend a Methodist Church.

There are a lot of wonderful things to be said about our denomination. We empower and ordain women in ministry and I learned at the Wesley Chapel Go Green Tea sponsored by their UMW, the United Methodist Church has always been a congregation that supported ecology and going green ever since the 70’s. The United Methodist Women is the mission arm of the denomination where women from all over the world are advocates of women, youth, and children.

Now, we are here at this moment and time, where we celebrate the two young people that decided to make a commitment to this church with their prayers, presence, and gifts. Because they were led to our doors, we have to continue to be the church family that they need. We have to love them through their mistakes, comfort them in times of distress, strengthen them in times of uncertainty and offer encouragement at all times because it’s a jungle out there. In doing that we are adhering to the early Wesleyan belief that we are to put emphasis on putting our faith and love for God and each other into actions. So in other words, it’s not what we say – it’s what we do that really matters.