The Methodists: Simple Rule #1 Do No Harm September 7, 2014 Galatians 5:13-15 13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: Love your neighbor as yourself. 15 If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. We are in the midst of talking about some of the foundational concepts of Methodism. Last week, we talked about the primacy of Scripture and how tradition, reason, and experience help to inform our view of Scripture. This week we want to begin talking about some of the earliest rules, if you will, of the Methodist movement. You know when John Wesley started out, his intention wasn t to start a new denomination? He was just trying to help his fellow believers in Christ to do a better job of living out their Christian faith. One of the things that John Wesley started with was called a Society. It was a large group of people that got together once each week to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation. (Discipline, 103, p. 73) In other words, they got together for something like what we today call worship. They prayed, they heard a Bible message, and they spent time with each other that they might be able to sort out just what is necessary to be a follower of Jesus. Then there were smaller groups called classes (we would call them small groups) that met together to learn in more depth, to encourage each other and to hold each other accountable. Each had about 12 people in each. To be in a Society one had to have a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins. In other words, they needed to believe that they needed help to get on the right path and to stay on it. Not too different from why we are all here, is it? We all need nourishment and encouragement and sometimes a swift kick in the behind to help us live our lives as Jesus lived and to love as Jesus loved. If they wanted to be able to receive the gift of eternal life that Jesus promised all those who believed (John 3:16), then they needed to realize that they had to have some help. For Wesley, the way that one could tell that you desired salvation (the alternative to living self absorbed lives that leads to destruction) was by living out three rules. These rules are listed in the Book of Discipline as being the rules for the Societies of John Wesley s day. 1
Retired United Methodist Bishop and former editor of the Upper Room, Rueben Job, calls these Three Simple Rules and wrote a little book that talks about them. Well, the three rules sound simple, but in practice they can prove quite challenging. We are going to spend the next few weeks talking about them. As Rueben Job would call them, the three Simple Rules as listed in the Book of Discipline are: 1. Do no harm. 2. Do good. 3. Stay in love with God. Or as John Wesley put it attending upon all the ordinances of God. To us attending upon all the ordinances of God means doing all of those things that connect us with God and that help us to build our relationship with God. Wesley described these as worship, reading God s word and hearing God s Word being expounded on, celebrating communion, praying in groups and privately, studying Scripture But more on that later. Today, we want to talk about Simple Rule #1 which is to Do No Harm. Anybody ever had a mom that said to them when they were growing up, If you can t say something nice, don t say anything at all! Well, I did. What she was trying to get at was Do No Harm. Don t say something to someone else that is going to cause hurt. Maybe you really don t like the outfit someone is wearing. Well you don t say, That is ugly! Or if you know that someone has really worked hard to cook a meal for you and you think it tastes awful, you don t have to criticize their cooking. I can still remember when I was in high school how one day I had a lapse in judgment and I chose to tell a good friend what I had heard being said about her. There was no need for me to tell her what I told her. She didn t need to know it. All it did was to damage our friendship. I apologized and I tried to make things right, but I think my careless words affected our friendship from that point forward. If only I had thought to not say anything! Simple Rule #1 is described in the Book of Discipline as: By doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, especially that which is most generally practiced. In John Wesley s day the evils that were causing the most trouble that he saw were: swearing, not keeping the Sabbath, drunkenness and drinking in general, slaveholding, fighting, black market selling or buying, usury, uncharitable or unprofitable conversation, doing to others as we wouldn t have done to us, doing things we know don t glorify God, selfindulgence, gluttony, borrowing with out the ability to pay back, etc. In other words emphasizing that we do harm when we act selfishly and just do what we want to do regardless of the consequences for others. Bingo! That is just what the apostle Paul is writing about in his letter to the church in Galatia. You see Paul is writing to tell them that they are free. They are free to live their lives as they choose. They don t have a whole, long complicated list of rules that they have to 2
live by. They don t have to pray at a certain time or eat certain types of foods or wash in a certain ceremonial way that the early Jewish believers in Christ thought that they had to. They were free from all those restrictions from The Law as it was laid out in the Old Testament and by those church officials who had interpreted the Old Testament over the centuries. They were free to live their lives. But Paul said, if you are going to be a follower of Jesus, you can t use your new freedom to trample on others to do whatever you want regardless of how it affects others (i.e. to sin). One person isn t better than another. One doesn t have more rights or privileges than the other, Paul says. Instead he says that we are to serve each other humbly in love. We should be looking out for the best needs of others, not ourselves. In fact, Paul said the entire Law (all those rules and regulations that they thought they had to follow to follow God) is fulfilled in one commandment and that is to love your neighbor as yourself. Does that sound familiar? Now obviously if we have a very poor self-image and if we don t see ourselves as the beautiful creature that God created us to be with God s own imaged stamped in us, then we may not really love ourselves. Now I don t mean that we have to be a narcissist. We don t have to be the center of our own universe to love ourselves. We need to love ourselves as God sees us as the perfect human specimen that he created us to be. If we can love ourselves that way, then that is the love that we want to duplicate for our neighbor. If you don t love yourself as a unique, unrepeatable miracle of God then you need to get your head around that concept first before you are going to have much success in loving others. But that idea of loving others as ourselves is hard isn t it? Our society encourages us to do harm to others all the time. We hear people gossiping and speaking disparagingly of others around us all the time and it is so easy just to jump in, to hop on the bandwagon. In his book, Three Simple Rules, Rueben Job addressed this. He said, To abandon the ways of the world for the way of Jesus is a radical step. P. 26 Three Simple Rules. He goes on to ask Is it possible to speak the truth in love and gentleness when others seem to speak partial truth in anger and hatred? p. 27 All you have to do is to turn on the TV and listen to the news and you hear opposite sides of the issues doing this all the time! 3
But Paul says we ought not do this. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. We ve all been in those situations or at least observed them where the conflict and the nastiness just escalates by the minute and the goal seems to be destruction. But Jesus said that we shouldn t do this either. Who are we to say that we are right and the other person wrong? Matthew 7: 1-5 1 Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say, Let me take the speck out of your eye, when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from the other person s eye. The kicker is that we need to help the other person without doing them harm. We need to love them and act towards them out of love, not out of superiority. The New Testament is filled with examples of just what Paul was talking about in Galatians. 1 Peter 3: 8-11 8 Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. 9 Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. 10 For, Whoever among you would love life and see good days must keep your tongue from evil and your lips from deceitful speech. 11 Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. (quoting Psalm 34:12-13) That s what Jesus did in his life, isn t it? He was sympathetic, loving, compassionate, humble, sought peace and worked to do good everywhere he went. That s what he was doing when he was healing people and feeding people and teaching people. He was truly loving his neighbor as himself. But, we aren t Jesus and we live in the real world. So although Rueben Job may call this a simple rule it is really anything but simple. It certainly isn t simple for me. Thomas a Kempis once wrote, We cannot trust ourselves too much, because we often lack grace and understanding. The light within us is small, and we soon let even this burn out for lack of care. Moreover, we often fail to notice how inwardly blind we are; for example, we frequently do wrong, and to make matters worse, we make excuses about it! Sometimes we are moved by passion and think it zeal. We condemn small things in others and pass over serious things in ourselves. We are quick enough to feel it when others hurt us and we even harbor those feelings but we do not notice how much we hurt others. A person who honestly examines his own behavior would never judge other people harshly. (p. 29-30 Three Simple Rules from The Imitation of Christ) 4
But the news isn t all dismal and discouraging. There is hope! We can choose as John Wesley and those of the early Methodist movement did to live our lives in harmony with the ways of Jesus rather than the ways of the world. We can choose to see each person as a child of God, just like us. And if they are a child of God, just like us, then we can choose to love them just as we love ourselves. The consequence of this, Rueben Job says is, We are formed and transformed to live more and more as Jesus lived. And this personal transformation leads to transformation of the world around as well. As two people in a long and successful marriage begin to think, act, and even look like each other, so those who practice this simple rule begin to think, act, and perhaps even look like Jesus. It is a gigantic step toward living the holy life that brings healing and goodness to all it touches. p. 31 & 32 Three Simple Rules It takes work, but we can make a conscious decision to do no harm. We can seek every day to live our lives as Jesus lived with love and compassion for all. Do No Harm really is a manifestation of the greatest commandment in Matthew 22: 37-39 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. God loves us so much that he gave us his son Jesus that we might not perish, but have eternal life. If God loves us so much that he paid for us with his own life, then how can we choose to taint our lives by doing that which is not good to ourselves and others? Don t turn away from his love, let God s love wash over you and nurture your love for God and others in return. Let s pray. 5