Ruth Bell Graham, the wife of Billy Graham, has written a story which she calls “The Mender.” She writes: “He had built for himself a great house on one of the Caribbean islands. It is a thing to behold. Tall rusty iron columns, collected and resurrected with an ingenious homemade device. This Great House is a masterpiece of salvaged materials. A collector and seller of scrap metal as well as antiques, he was also fascinated with broken bits and pieces of china dug from his front yard. His friends, John and June Cash, laughingly remarked it was the first time they had heard of a yard sale where the man had sold the yard itself. Carefully he fitted and glued the pieces together. Few ever came out whole. They remained simply a collection of one who cared. When I expressed interest, he gave me a blue-and-white plate, carefully glued together — pieces missing. ‘You remind me of God,’ I said. By the look on his face, I knew I shocked him, and I hurriedly explained. ‘God pieces back broken lives lovingly. Sometimes a piece is irretrievably lost. But still He gathers what He can and restores us.’”
Ruth Graham’s story is a parable of the church. We are an unusual collection of broken people. But God has taken us and collected the pieces of our lives and lovingly glued them back together. As we have experienced his grace, he has transformed our lives. Pamela Reeve has written, “Faith is remembering I am God’s priceless treasure when I feel utterly worthless.” How wonderful the grace of God is. It helps us to know that we are loved no matter what. In his presence we experience forgiveness for the past and encouragement for the days ahead. The problem is that this kind of grace and forgiveness is not always what we experience from those who are supposed to belong to God. It is a shock sometimes when we experience the forgiveness of God and the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit, to come among God’s people and find ourselves being criticized and judged. How is it that God is so full of love and acceptance and some of his people are so guarded and unaccepting.? How is it that the forgiveness of God is so free and freeing, but the approval of others is so hard to get? Why is the church sometimes like the TV show Survivor where there are those who say, “You are different from us. You threaten us. You don’t do things the way we have always done them. You are not part of our group. We don’t like you, so we have gathered the council and voted you off our island.” It can be hard to survive in the church. Why is it that the people of God are so unlike God at times — the God who came, not to condemn the world, but to save the world? (John 3:17). It is because we have not made a relationship with others a priority in our lives.
Someone has said, “The church is the only army in the world that shoots its wounded.” The church should not be a place where we are wounded, it should be a safe place where we are supported. The first point this morning is that we learn to have a relationship with others: When we live out the love of God. It seems as though there are many people who want to experience the love of God, but they do not want to share that love with others. They want to be forgiven, but they do not want to forgive. They want to live by the grace of God, while holding others accountable for their errors. They want God to erase their sins while they pick at other people’s faults. They want people to see them as one of the pillars of the church, while they give no credit to others for their abilities and contributions.
I continue to be amazed as I read through the biblical account of the life of Christ, that during Christ’s darkest days, the disciples were arguing among themselves. Time after time he told them that he was about to be taken into the courts of his enemies and be beaten, mistreated, and eventually crucified. But it is as though they never heard him, because they were so preoccupied with their little internal quarrels. Even during the last supper that they would have together, they were arguing about who was the greatest among them. They were so busy taking care of themselves that they were not at all concerned about what was about to happen to Jesus. They certainly were not concerned about the people outside the room where they were eating. They were only concerned about their own position and reputation in the group.
How many understand that the church is not about you? How many understand that God has brought us together to love and serve other people, and do the work of God? Even Jesus “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). His mission was not to have others serve him, but to give his live in service to others. Should our lives be any different, if we claim to be his followers?
This love has to be intentional, and you have to get your focus off of yourself. You cannot walk around with all of your nerves dangling outside your body waiting to be hurt by someone who brushes up against you. If you are coming here worrying about yourself — who spoke to you and who did not; who looked at you the wrong way; who said the wrong thing or made the wrong move — of course you are going to be hurt, because your focus is entirely on yourself. Maybe that other person had a bad day or an upset stomach. Maybe they are not good at communicating. Maybe they are clueless. Maybe they just had a fight with their wife or husband before they came to church. You can’t walk around worrying about how others are treating you, you have to walk around seeing how you can live out the love of God for someone else — how you can serve; how you can be a friend; how you can show you care — whether that love is returned to you in exactly the way you think it should be or not.
And neither can you be a person who goes around stomping on the feelings of others. You can’t go around trying to fix everybody and straighten out their actions and thinking. Don’t be a faultfinder. What you say may be true, but it may be cruel at the same time. It may be insensitive and drive people away from God instead of drawing them to him. How will other people experience the love of God if we never live it out for them? We are to be God’s agents of love in a love starved world.
The second point is that we learn to have a relationship with others: When we learn that we are one. How many here know that God does not recognize denominations? How many here know that God does not recognize the United Methodist Church? The only thing that God recognizes are the people who belong to him. When you stand before God at the judgment, do you think he is going to ask you what denomination you belonged to? I don’t think so. The only thing that will matter then is whether or not you have a relationship with him. God is not going to say, “Oh, you’re a United Methodist! Well, come on in.” He is not going to put the Baptists on one floor and the Presbyterians on another. The Bible says there is , “ONE Lord, ONE faith, ONE baptism; ONE God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:5). When we belong to Christ we are one, and we need to act like it. When Jesus prayed for us in that great prayer found in the seventeenth chapter of John, he prayed, “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21). Our witness to the world is whether or not we love each other. It determines whether they will believe what we say about God. Those outside the church do not care about our doctrine or our beautiful building. They don’t care what the sign says in front of the church. What they want to know is whether the people under the steeple love each other, and whether they would be loved if they dared to step inside.
Paul had to warn those in the early church who were having problems in this area: “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other” (Galatians 5:15). The problem is that the biting and devouring has continued among some to this very day. Don’t tell me you love God if you are constantly finding fault with other people. Don’t talk to me about your love for God if there are some people you would not welcome into this church. Don’t talk to me about your love for God if you look at some people here as the outsiders. Don’t talk to me about your love for God if you are criticizing and judging other people. Don’t tell me you love God if you are wanting to take the speck out of someone’s eye while ignoring the log in your own. Don’t tell me about your love for God, because I won’t believe you — and neither will anyone else, especially God.
John wrote: “We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:19-21). When we love each other it is the sign that we are in love with God. Paul’s message to the early church is a message we still need for today. He said, “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:1-3). Our unity is important to God.
The third point is that we learn to have a relationship with others: When we continue to grow in our relationship with God. The first thing that will happen when you stop growing in your relationship with God is that you will have problems with your relationships with other people. Let me be careful to say that not all problems in relationships are a sign that you are not growing in your relationship with God. Sometimes these relationships are beyond our control. Sometimes the other person is making it impossible to get along, or has ended the relationship. But I can tell you from experience that when you drift in your relationship with God it will affect all the other relationships in your life. Conversely, the closer you come to God, the closer you will come to other people.
When you fall away from God it always affects how you treat other people. Listen to the Bible as it says, “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19-21). Did you hear the things which were listed among the things we normally think of when we talk about sin? It always amazes me that we are shocked when someone in the church commits adultery, and we even have the tendency to shun them. But when it comes to someone sowing discord and creating dissension, we excuse these people and remind ourselves what good workers they are in the church.
It has been wonderful to experience the closeness that has developed among the people in our small groups. We have come closer to God and closer to each other. As we understand how much we have been forgiven, even though we did not deserve it, we have a deep desire to forgive others, even if they may not deserve it. As we have experienced the grace of God, we want to extend grace to others. As we begin to understand how patient and kind God has been toward us, we want to be patient and kind toward others. As we share together, and become increasingly honest about who we are and what we are really like, we are encouraged that we do not find people judging us, but loving us. We are living out the scripture which says, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Colossians 3:12-14).
We do this because the Bible says, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:312-32). We forgive because we have been forgiven. We are patient with others because God in his mercy has been patient with us. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
Robert Johnson, in his book Balancing Heaven and Earth, tells of a dream he had in which his soul was on trial. He writes, “A prosecutor presented all the sins of commission and omission that I was responsible for throughout my life, and the list was very long indeed. That went on for hours, and it fell on me like a landslide. I was feeling worse and worse to the point where the soles of my feet were hot. After hours of accusations from the prosecution, a group of angels appeared to conduct my defense. All they could say was, ‘But he loved.’ They began chanting this over and over in a chorus: ‘But he loved. But he loved. But he loved.’ This continued until dawn, and in the end, the angels won, and I was safe.”
The Bible says, “Love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).
Rodney J. Buchanan
January 28, 2001
Mulberry Street UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
IN SEARCH OF A RELATIONSHIP WITH OTHERS
Acts 2:42-47
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42).
We learn to have a relationship with others:
1. When we ________________________________________ .
2. When we ________________________________________ .
3. When we ________________________________________.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION (Jan. 28, 2001)
1. Share an encouraging experience that you have had in the church which was the result of someone showing you Christian friendship?
2. What are the necessary elements of having a relationship with others? Are there some you think are important which were not covered in the sermon?
3. What is Christian fellowship supposed to do for us?
4. What are the things that sometimes keep people in the church from being open and caring?
5. How should our relationship with God affect our relationship with others?
6. What are the things we have received from God which we should share with others?
7. Do people have to be worthy of our friendship before we give it?
8. Think of how someone has hurt or harmed you. How did you work past this situation?
9. Read Matthew 26:34-45. How satisfying did Jesus find his friendships to be?
10. What part does selflessness and sacrifice play in our relationship with others?
11. How are relationships within the church different from relationships outside the church? (i.e. How are they supposed to be different?)
