Becoming the People of God Part 5: God's

Becoming the People of God

Part 5: God’s

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

November 13, 2011

We have been talking over the last few weeks about becoming the people of God. *What does it mean to become God’s people? We’ve talked about how it means belief commitments and practices. These beliefs and practices  frame our lives together so that we live in particular ways. We believe and do particular things.

We do not become the people of God accidently. If we are to become the people of God we will do so by intention. We will do so on purpose. It is God’s purpose that we become God’s people. What is in question is whether we will become God’s people.

We must be intentional about these beliefs and practices because the cultural environment in which we live does not have the same commitments to which Christ invites us. We have been looking at those over the last few weeks.

I have wanted to repeat these so that we can fix them in our minds as distortions of our faith and recognize them as propositions that are not Christian. When contrasted with the Christian faith, we find among them some falsity, some distortion, or a failure to go far enough. They will not lead us to the God we affirm.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

·         A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.

·         God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

·         The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself.

·         Good people go to heaven when they die.

Some of these sound plausible, but we’ve reviewed how they contrast with our particular commitments as Christians. Christianity is offering a contrasting alternative to these positions.

Our Affirmation of Faith

·         We believe in God: who has created and is creating, who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh, to reconcile and make new.…

o   God who is engaged and comes to us.

·         We are called to be the Church: to celebrate God’s presence, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen.

o   Beyond nice and fair to proactively celebrating and being God’s presence in the world for service and justice with Jesus’ way as our way.

·         We believe in God...who works in us and others by the Spirit. We trust in God.

o   It’s not about us. It’s about our trusting that God is at work in us. It’s about trusting God through all things whether we are feeling happy in any given moment or not.

·         Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us.

o   God respects us and cares for us enough to take our lives seriously and we believe that ultimately God desires our healing and restoration to the persons God created us to be.

To become the people of God is to live allowing these statements and these practices to shape and form us into whom God has created us to be and to discover God’s call on our lives. Just as we will not become accomplished violinists, or carpenters, or gymnasts without attending to certain consistent practices, we will not become Christ followers unless we take on particular beliefs and practices that will form us in a particular way.

We turn now to today’s proposition of MTD

·         God is not involved in my life except when I need God to solve a problem. 

This is another proposition that is emblematic of our contemporary cultural situation and goes along with the first proposition of MTD that we considered. It is the companion to the God who stands back until we beckon God to come back. This one is about our standing back from God until we are in trouble.

We are generally in a position of confidently taking care of ourselves. In our world of relative abundance and comfort and safety, it is easy to imagine that we have no need of God. If we want food we go to the grocery store, if we are sick we go to the doctor. If we are bored we turn on the TV. If we are cold we put on a sweater or turn up the heat. It is often easy to believe that we are in charge.

This is falling asleep to God. This is being intoxicated by simply trying to be on top of the affairs of the world. Paul says in our lesson this morning:

So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober;

When we can’t solve our problem we turn to God. We wake up.

But here is the question: When our crisis/problems begin to overwhelm us, will we be able to recognize God?

God is always there, but we don’t always have the eyes to see and ears to hear.

We need to practice. There is certainly a sense in which we can find God anywhere, but we need to know how to look, how to listen. How to recognize God’s presence.  It can be especially difficult in times of crisis or trouble.

The classical language for this is that we are to attend to the means of grace. We have already spoken of these in a way when we considered the four particular tasks to which we are called to:

• ·         Celebrate God’s presence.
• ·         Love and serve others.
• ·         Seek justice and resist evil.
• ·         Proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen.

It is in doing these things that we come to that we become more and more practiced in recognizing God and how God is at work in the world.  This list could be made more specific and extended to include other practices of the Christian life:

Prayer, worship, reading and studying the Bible. Silence, solitude, fasting. Feeding the hungry, serving the poor.

Some of us require help in knowing how to engage in these practices. There are many ways to learn. Some of them are offered here at Fairport United Methodist Church. Some of us require a regular group to support us in these habits. We offer some of those here too.

Let us not fall asleep. Let us not remain intoxicated by our management of the comforts of the world.

A colleague of mine, Doug Spencer, a retired pastor, gave this analogy. He said that we might very well run into our physician at the mall or the grocery store. We might very well run into our barber or hairdresser at the library or the movie theater. But if we want to be treated for an illness or consult about our health. If we want our hair cut, that is much more likely to happen if we make an appointment.

The means of grace are like making an appointment with God. It is the experience of God’s people through the ages that God will show up for these appointments.

And it turns out that the more familiar we get God by keeping these appointments, the more we will come to recognize God even in those times when we are not particularly keeping an appointment.

If we believe that God is only worth bothering with when we have a problem to solve, it is unlikely that we will recognize God even in those times in any meaningful way.

The more we keep those appointments of the means of grace, or our four tasks we have talked about,  the more we will come to know todays contrasting statement from our affirmation.

·         We are not alone; we live in God's world.

We will know this  not just as a proposition of belief, but we will know it experientially as the frame of our life.

There is a great temptation to believe that we live in our world. Our affirmation is very clear that we live in God’s world. We have no world but God’s world.

It’s not about us inviting God into our world, rather it’s about recognizing that there is no world besides God’s world.

St. Paul is telling us to wake up to that fact. Wake up to the fact that this is God’s world, whether we open our eyes to notice it or not.

To become the people of God is to live as though we are convinced that we live in God’s world and we are not alone

This raises the challenging question. Maybe it’s even a kind of judgment: are we attending to these means of grace, these beliefs and practices, so that we are experiencing this world as God’s world and know each moment that we are not alone. That we are always and everywhere in the midst of God?

Becoming the people of God means that we are connecting with God through the means of grace.

But notice this also: We have been talking about becoming the PEOPLE of God. Not persons of God or individuals of God. To become people of God also means that we are to be connecting with one another about being the people of God.

Paul says:  (5:11) Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing. 

Paul recognizes that community (peer) reinforcement is needed. He recognizes that the becoming the people of God project is a community development project.

Becoming the people of God is a community effort. The Christians in Thessalonica were doing it. Paul says, “as indeed you are doing.” How about us?

So here is the challenge that crystallizes this here and now. The reality is that sporadic connection to this community of faith is not going make this happen. Is not going form us into the people of God.

Sporadic church attendance is not going to make this happen. Hanging back from participation in church activities is not going to make this happen. Not connecting with a smaller group for service or learning or conversation is going to keep this from happening.

If we want our children to become people of God, irregular Sunday school attendance and the lack of sufficient adult leadership is going to keep this from happening.

These are the kinds of contexts in which we can build each other up. These are the kinds of activities and opportunities that will form us together into the people of God.

Again: We do not become the people of God accidently. If we are to become the people of God we will do so by intention. We will do so on purpose. It is God’s purpose that we become God’s people. What is in question is whether we will become God’s people. Some of us are well on the way. Others are just catching on. Some are still looking for a way to engage more fully. Please, don’t give up. Those of us who are more involved must invite those who are less involved.

I know there are other things to do besides being here on Sunday mornings and at other times for other activities. I know that there are lots of stuff that pull people away from regular participation. But I also know that we won’t become the people of God together unless we are together. Unless we spend time with God and one another. Unless we focus our priorities to reflect what we say we believe.

Keep your eyes open for opportunities to engage more fully. The invitation is not simply to imagine. The opportunity is to make this real for one another and for ourselves.

We are being invited to become God’s people. We are being invited to live the reality that is already true:

We live in God’s world. We are invited to become God’s people.

 Imagine that.