In the movie “Finding Nemo”, a clown fish named Marlin goes on a frantic search and rescue mission to save his son Nemo who was captured by a scuba diver and put in a dentist’s fish tank. Marlin meets a blue reef fish named Dory who saw the address on the diver’s mask and knows where they took Nemo. Unfortunately, Dory has short term memory loss. She can’t remember her own name, let alone the address P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sidney.
The plot is a clever twist of a common theme in many movies and TV shows. It’s the
“Who Am I?” plot, in which a lead character has amnesia and can’t remember who
they are.
It’s an identity crisis.
Life is not a movie, but people do have an identity crisis
in real life when they don’t know
they belong to God. God’s Word reminds
us our identity is greater than the superficial things of this world. Our true identity is in Christ.
4 You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor.
5 And you are living stones that God is building into his
spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests. Through the
mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God. 6 As the
Scriptures say,
“I am placing a cornerstone in Jerusalem,
chosen
for great honor,
and anyone who trusts in him
will
never be disgraced.”
7 Yes, you who trust him recognize the honor God has given
him. But for those who reject him,
“The stone that the builders rejected
has
now become the cornerstone.”
8 And, “He is the stone that makes people stumble,
the
rock that makes them fall.”
They stumble because they do not obey
God’s word, and so they meet the fate that was planned for them.
9 But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You
are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result,
you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness
into his wonderful light.
10 “Once
you had no identity as a people;
now
you are God’s people.
Once you received no mercy;
now
you have received God’s mercy.”
11 Dear
friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from
worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. 12 Be careful
to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you
of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor
to God when he judges the world.
“You are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple…” (verse 5) The Holy Temple in Jerusalem was the most important place on earth to Jews in New Testament times. They believed it was where God’s Spirit dwelled on earth. Some had even come to idolize the Temple. But Jesus reminded people God’s Spirit is not confined to the Temple. In fact, people who put their faith in God through Jesus are the real residence of God’s Holy Spirit. Therefore, Christians together make up the true Holy Temple. What an honor and privilege!
Further more, verse 5 says “You are his holy priests…”
A priest is someone who intercedes to God on behalf of people on
earth. A priest prays for people and performs
religious rituals that help people find healing and wholeness and forgiveness and
purification so they can reconnect and be at one with God. In the Old Testament, only one a certain
tribe from the twelve tribes of Israel could be priests. And even within that tribe, anyone who had a
blemish or a defect was disqualified. Only
perfect people could be priests. So for
example, if you were born without a finger or lost eye in accident, you couldn’t
serve as a priest. But when we put our
faith in Jesus, it is different. We are
all priest of God Most High—even if we aren’t perfect—because Jesus makes us
whole.
Verse 9 says, “You
are a chosen people…” In the Old
Testament, only Israelites were consider the chosen people. Everyone else was a Gentile. And in Jesus’ day, Jews believed only Jews
were God’s chosen people. But Jesus
shows us that anyone who places their faith in Christ is God’s chosen. So we could paraphrase verse 10 to say, “Once
you were nobody; now you are God’s somebody!”
In Christ, everybody is somebody special. Sinners become saints. Heathens become priests. The lame are made whole. The blind can see and deaf can hear. Those who were damned become holy. This is what it means to be
Christian.
There are many different denominations of Christian churches in our world. I believe God uses them all to serve a special purpose. Communities need Baptists and Presbyterians and Pentecostals and Methodists.
Unfortunately, when a church struggles with an identity crisis, it may begin to look around at what all the churches are doing. They may think, "Well that church is on fire and really growing. They must be doing something right. Maybe we should just copy what they are doing." Sometimes individuals have them same identity crisis. They forget who they are or for some reason aren't happy with their life. They look around at some other people who seem to have their life all worked out. The temptations, the easy fix, is to just try to copy someone else.
The trouble with both of these quick fix situations--for a church or and individual--is that God created us the way we are for a reason. God made the Methodist church Methodist for a reason to fulfill a specific need in a community. God made you as an individual for a specific reason. If you try to copy someone else, you won't be you and something important God wanted to give the world will be lacking. The same true in the case of a church. If my church just tries to copy some other church, we won't be who God wants us to be.
I am a Methodist minister, but I was not always a Methodist. I grew up going to Baptist churches. My grandparents and parents were Baptists and so I was a Baptist. I started attending a Methodist church when I was 18. My girlfriend (now my wife) and I started attending Wesley United Methodist Church in Macon, GA with her friend Laurie Stewart.
Now, I was skeptical when I started with the Methodist church. The Baptist churches I attended as a kid taught me to be wary of churches that were overly ceremonial and ritualistic. These, they warned, were superstitious innovation that were not necessary or biblical. So I was concerned when the first thing I saw happen in the Methodist worship service was acolytes lighting candles on the altar table. I eventually learned that this wasn't some magic ritual, it was a symbol to remind us that Christ, the Light of the World, is with us when we worship in church and that His light goes back out into the world as we leave (symbolized by the acolytes carrying the flame from the candles out at the end of the service). Churchgoers follow the light out back into the world. This is a tradition that teaches us about our faith and our purpose as followers of Christ.
I learned that the Methodist church is a church that values tradition. We have many. We believe we can learn from the traditions of Christians who've gone before us and wrestled with the Bible and with the Christian faith. These tradition help us be better Christians today and help preserve the hard lessons of those who've gone before us. But Methodist are not only a church that values traditions.
We also value reason. Jesus told us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:37). So Methodist use the brains God have us to understand Him and how we should live. Our intellect helps us to mature in the faith Jesus gave us. And our intelligence keeps our traditions from becoming superstitions. We understand that Jesus is not literally in the candlelight on our altars. The candles are symbols for our minds to interpret. And sometimes our reason also concludes that some tradition have outlived their usefulness and we can change them. At other times, reason leads us to know a tradition is wrong and needs to be changed. Methodist value tradition and reason.
Methodist also value experience. Our relationship with God is not merely intellectual. It is an personal experience that includes feelings and emptions and an actual relationship with God. our relationship must be more than intellectual--just as a relationship with another person must be more than intellectual in order to be real. So we experience God as a relationship and we learn about God and our faith through personal and communal experiences.
Methodist value tradition, reason, and experience. However, Scripture is the foundation of all our beliefs and practices. We understand that our experiences and feelings are limited and very subjective. We may have feelings of great love for someone today, but tomorrow we feel quite irritated with them. And then the day after that, we may feel great love once more. That is the subjective nature of experiential feelings. Traditions change, reason may evolve, and experience is subjective, but the Word of God in Holy Scripture is always the same. The Bible is an anchor that keeps our faith from floating away into the oblivion of our own human subjectivity. Methodist have always been a people grounded in Scripture and we must always be so if we are to be true to Christ our Lord.
Thankfully, Methodists are not a group who accept Scripture blindly as fundamentalists often do. No, Methodist read Scripture intelligently--seeking to understand the historical and cultural contexts. We use our reason to mine the depths of God's Word. We use traditions to remember the lessons of God's Word. And we experience God through the lens of what Scripture teaches us is true about God.
Tradition, reason, experience and Scripture are all distinctive parts of the Methodist way of Christian living. They are some of the reasons I am a Methodist and I think our way of following Christ may be helpful for you too. But there is another distinctive features of Methodism that is important for our world. I will share some of these in the coming weeks, but I want to end with one more thing today.
The Methodist church is a sacramental church. We believe that Jesus gave the Church some sacred ceremonies that He uses to help His people. For instance, we typically celebrate Holy Communion once a month in a Methodist church because we believe it is a sacred and special ceremony Jesus told His followers to practice.
We call it Holy Communion while many other denominations prefer the term The Lord's Supper. We prefer Holy Communion because of the notion of communing with Jesus. You see, some denomination would prefer to call Holy Communion an ordinance, while we call it a sacrament. An ordinance is something you are supposed obey (sort of like a city ordinance). So some denominations practice the Lord's Supper primarily out of obedience to the ordinance Jesus gave that they such celebrate the meal. Methodists, on the other hand, celebrate Communion as a sacrament. We believe it is a sacred moment when God is actually doing something. So yes, we practice Communion out of obedience, but also because God does something. We base our believe that God does something on several passage from the Bible where God acted through the celebration of Holy Communion. For instance, the understanding of the 2 disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) was illuminated when Jesus broke the bread of Holy Communion.
Methodists believe Holy Communion is sacred, but we also believe it is accessible to anyone. We practice an "open table" where anyone can receive Holy Communion even if they are not a mmber of the church or even if they are young children. We believe God is infinitely sacred, but He is not something that must be kept separate from people. Because of what Jesus did for us on the cross--shedding His blood to purify us--God has torn the veil that separates us from in two. We can come boldly into his presence and so we do this symbolically by welcoming everyone to His table in Holy Communion. It is a beautiful sacrament that nourishes the spirit just as food nourishes the body. God impart grace to help His people through the celebration of Holy Communion, and we want everyone to receive this blessing if they are willing.
I hope you will follow this series as I continue over the next few weeks to discuss the identity of the Methodist people and what I believe we have to offer the world. Perhaps, you may also discover your identity and maybe even choose to be a Methodist Christian as well.
