Calvary United Methodist Church February 28, 2016 A PRACTICING CHRISTIAN Rev. Dr. S. Ronald Parks Children s Sermon: Job 25 God s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven: God s vision for us. Let us celebrate that vision by allowing, by inviting, by welcoming, the children to the front of the sanctuary to share in a time of good news. Fender and I watched one of our all-time favorite things the other day, the 140 th Annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. How many people watched the dog well, there s a couple of dog aficionados out there. Did you know that there are 199 breeds currently recognized by the American Kennel Club? And the purpose of a dog show is to pick the best dog from all the breeds that enter. Now, each breed has a standard. A standard is a description of what the perfect or ideal dog of that particular breed would look like. It would have something about its physical attributes. This is for example, one standard of one particular breed and if you could see that far, right, I wasn t going to blow up all the different parts, but as you can see, every aspect of the dog, his physicality, his demeanor, his temper, every aspect of the dog is described in terms of what is perfect for that particular breed.
So, at a dog show the dog closest to being perfect, closest to the standard wins what is called the best of the breed. So they take all the Golden Retrievers and they put them together and the look at all of them and then decide which one is closest to perfect and that one gets the award of the best of the breed. But that s not all the judging that happens. The breeds are divided into several groups and they are divided based on what the breed is known for in terms of its basic abilities. There are terriers, there are working dogs, there are hounds, there are sporting dogs. So there are seven different classifications of breeds. And the dog closest to perfection in a group of a breed wins What s called the best in group? So you have dogs that are the best in breed, then you have dogs that are the best in a group, which is a bunch of breeds. Then there is this other thing. This is the big prize. The dog closest to perfect out of all the dogs who have entered in the show, can you guess what it is called?
Now, think of this perfect in terms of the dogs in the show would be called the (The best) Best in show. That s the phrase that s used to describe the most perfect dog as part of the show. The dog closest to the standard of perfection, not just for its breed, but in terms of its relationship with the other winning dogs, It's the World s Most Perfect Dog. That s the only way to describe it. It s the best in show, but the people that enter their dogs in the show, they are the ones who have a real eye for the standard and they work very hard to make sure that their dog represents their breed and their group so that they can win best in show. Now, who says that that s the most perfect dog? Do you have any idea who makes that decision? Now, like everything else, when you have to decide if something is close go ahead (The dog people do). The dog people do, of course, and the dog people are called judges. The judges are the ones who pick the winners of best in breed, best in group and best in show. But here s a question: they are trying to judge what is perfect. Are they perfect? (Yeah!) They are? Well, I m sure they would like to think so, but we all know nobody is perfect.
In fact, nothing is perfect except It s a question that ends with a name, who might be perfect? Exactly! God is perfect. Nothing is perfect except God. In this particular section of the book of Job, Job, who was wondering why his life is so bad, is counseled by some friends of his who point out just how imperfect he really is. But these words are really helpful to us because they remind us of the basic truths of our lives and what it means to think of ourselves as perfect: God is great! God is good! Everything in the world fits together perfectly. It all works in his plan. Do you think you re smart enough to understand God s plan? You d rather not answer that question. I don t blame you. Can you look behind the curtain of his majesty and figure out what God is doing? Probably not. Are you going to argue with God s choices? (No.) No. You are paying attention. So you know better? You know better than that. You know better? Face it. Everything has its flaws and its limits. Stars, which we look up into the sky and see. The moon, which rises and is beautiful as it comes up over the horizon. Creatures of all sorts and types including dogs have flaws. And people have flaws. Look out here at the congregation of Calvary this morning. How many of them do you think have flaws and aren t perfect? (Everyone) Every one. You aren t insulted by that, are you? Every one of them is imperfect and has flaws. Nothing is perfect except God s purpose and plan. We re right where we re supposed to be. So look around. Take a look at the people around you. Everything is perfectly placed in his world. Everything and everyone has flaws, as we know.
Nothing and no one is perfect. This is a picture of Fender and me on the day that we picked Fender out of a litter of six puppies. And we picked him out because we thought he was perfect. But we ve recently learned that he s not perfect, and some of you have noticed this too. If you take a good look at Fender s body, you ll notice that there are patches on his body, on his legs, his tail, his back, where his hair has fallen out. And it s just the beginning. Fender is never going to be in the Westminster Dog Show, because his imperfection if now becoming pretty obvious. So we didn t know exactly what the problem was. We didn t know why his hair was falling out. So we took him to a vet. After some testing the vet has decided that Fender has what s called sebaceous adenitis. It s so unusual that the vet, as we were talking to him, actually had his assistant go Google the term to make sure that it was something that he remembered learning about in veterinary school about 35 years earlier. It is a rare and hereditary skin disease that s commonly found in dogs that are just like Fender, his breed, standard poodles, from the time they are about 1-5 years of age.
It results in cycles of his hair falling out. And if he has new hair grow back in, it will look different, it will have a different color and a different texture than his coat. The curly stuff that you see on the top if his head, he s supposed to look like that all over his body, but he doesn t. And sebaceous adenitis has no cure. There is nothing that we can do to make it go away. The condition that he has, however, can be managed with regular medicated shampoos; Fender is not a huge fan of baths, and other kinds of treatment. So, yesterday, we began the regimen. There s Fender in the bathtub. You can see on his face how much he enjoys having his mom spray him with water. The she lathers him up with a special shampoo. Look at that face; there s joy and thanksgiving. So after he sits with that shampoo on him for a little bit, then he comes out of the tub and he gets dried off.
Then he gets sprayed with a combination of water and a special kind of oil. After he gets sprayed, you have to rub it in so that his whole body is covered with oil, which keeps his skin from becoming flakey and dry and causing him to scratch at it. Then he has to be kind of like still for two hours. That s the hardest part, because he is like a little greased pig for a period of time. After that, he gets back in the bathtub for another shower to wash off you can see where this is going, right to wash off all the oil Then he gets dried off after a special shampoo and condition that he gets lathered with at the end. Fender s not perfect. He s never going to win a dog show. He s never going to be any prize anything.
And we know that he s not perfect, but we also know that if we say that God s purposes and plan are perfect, then we have to figure out how God s perfect plan works itself out in a kind of an imperfect situation because Sebaceous adenitis is a lot of work. It s a lot of work. And not everybody who has a dog who has this condition keeps the dog, if you know what I mean. So God gives Fender lots of love to make up for all the work that he s going to have to go through to keep his skin healthy and to keep his hair growing. And you know how he gives Fender lots of love? He gave him to us. In our house, there s lots of love for Fender. And he also gave him to you because in this house, there is lots of love for Fender. And you know what? Even though he has a problem, even though he ll never win a dog show, even though he s not a perfect dog, he s perfectly happy. Thanks for sharing in our time this morning.
Message: Philippians 3:9-16 (Video) After the service I ll be doing that in the parking lot. If you live in the Portland area you ve seen this guy around, but you ve seen him doing a hundred types of things. He rides a unicycle in addition to riding the bottom half of BB8, the droid from the new Star Wars movie. He plays Christmas tunes during that season. He also plays at parties and other things as Darth Vader. He has also auditioned for American s Got Talent, if you ve watched that show over the years you may remember him. So who is this guy? Well, he has given himself the title of The Unipiper because he rides a unicycle
While playing the bagpipes. Pretty obvious, right? His name, however, is Brian Kidd. Brian Kidd, when he was eleven years old walked past a yard sale in his neighborhood and saw laying on the front yard a unicycle. And he bought it for three dollars. He took it home and it took him a little time to keep from skinning his knees because as you know, riding a unicycle is not an easy thing to do. But he mastered that unicycle, to the point where it became a part of him. If you look closely at this picture of his wedding, you ll notice he s sitting on the unicycle. He was married not on the unicycle and without the Darth Vader mask, but he wanted that to be part of his legacy. Brian Kidd, however, also found that he enjoyed the music of the bagpipe and he happened to have a great-uncle who was a piper, so his great-uncle on his thirteenth birthday gave him what s called Chanters. It is a practice set of bagpipes. Bagpipes, a decent set, cost about $1500. And it s not the sort of thing that you would get into until you decide whether or not you like playing them and you begin to develop your technique. Can you see where this is going? So Brian Kidd had two hobbies and one day at college, one of his friends dared him to, while riding his unicycle, play his bagpipes. There may have been some substance involved there at some point in time. He, in fact, did it and really enjoyed doing it and decided to make a career out of it. So, if you go to You-Tube and you type in Unipiper, you will see literally a dozen videos of Brian riding his unicycle or other sorts of balancing type modes of transportation playing his bagpipes according to a certain theme. He loves it. It is his passion. Can you imagine how many hours he s put in to learning how to do either one of those two things, neither of which are easy and then figuring out how to put them together? Amazing! Malcolm Gladwell says that to be good at anything, you need to put in about 10,000 hours. That s a lot of time for somebody who is 28 years of age. Why does he do it? He does it for this sort of thing:
Recently, he said, A lady sent me a video via Facebook of her 10 year old son unicycling and playing the practice chanter. She told me that I was the inspiration for that. I told her son to practice every day. He ll be better than me before you know it! Practice makes perfect. You ve heard that before and this is what makes every human pursuit that involves the desire to be excellent, this is what makes it so hard. It s not something you do on the first try. It s not something you do in the first month. It s not something that you can have a casual interest in. You have to work at it. Discipleship, Brothers and Sisters, is nothing more and nothing less than practice makes perfect. And what it is that we re striving for, what it is that we re practicing, is the love of Christ. In our sermon series about: What do Methodist thing about perfection, I thought it was important to begin by sort of sharing what Wesley said perfection is not. Wesley took a great deal of grief about his ideas on perfection. He was accused of being an enthusiast, a person for whom religion was nothing more than sentiment and emotions and that he could get all wrapped up in this love of God stuff. He was also accused of being an antinominalist, which means that he believed that the law was no longer relevant and that all you had to do was be a person of piety and faith. But Wesley was not interested in being pigeon-holed. Wesley wanted his people to know, he wanted us to know, just what exactly Christian perfection is and how we should be striving for it. Christian perfection is NOT, according to Wesley:
Freedom from ignorance. You are never going to know perfectly everything there is to know. In fact, part of our identity is based on the concept that we know so little about most things, including ourselves, that we either choose to be curious and discover or we just avoid it all together. Christian perfection is not freedom from ignorance and It is not freedom from error or mistake. You are never going to be assured that every decision you make is the right decision that everything that you invest yourself in is going to turn out the way you thought it would. That s part of the ignorance thing. The ignorance thing is our knowledge, the error and mistake is our action. And Christian perfection is not freedom from the things that make us us, the things that make us human: our temperament, our abilities, our gifts. We are never going to be complete in any specific way. And we are never going to be able to compare ourselves to others and say that we are better than that individual. We may be better at certain things. There may be people who are excellent at certain things. But they are never going to be perfect in the execution of their lives. And we re never free from temptation. We are always this close to blowing our lives up, to saying and doing things that will hurt people. Do you realize that as I stand here with one sentence, I could split this church in half? One sentence. That s how close we all are to doing things that are so hurtful that we actually end relationships with other people. Christian perfection is also not being a Christian. What? How can that possibly be? Christian perfection is not being a Christian? No. It s not being a Christian. Christian perfection for Wesley is becoming Christ. Nothing less. Becoming Christ to those around us. It is not about having our names on a membership role in an organization. That s being a Christian. Oh, I m a member of this congregation, I m a Christian. No, being a Christian means becoming Christ. It s a process. It s a lifelong journey. And here s what he had to say about that:
Whatever is just and pure, if there be any virtue or any reason to praise God, they are all brought together in this one word: Christian perfection is love. In this is perfection and happiness: You shall love the Lord with all your heart, and soul and mind and strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. This one perfect good shall be our one ultimate end. This we claim as the goal of our life: to show others the Lord who is all in all. Perfection, here s the definition, perfection is the heart habitually, which means a lot over time, habitually filled with the love for God and neighbor. It s having the mind of Christ and walking as he walked. In all honesty, perfection is becoming Christ. Is that a possibility? How is it that we think about that? What is it that this asks of us? According to our discipline, these statements help us to define what perfection looks like: It is a gracious gift of God s power and love. Oh, great! It s a gift! That means I don t have to conjure it up out of myself. It is by virtue of the power of the Spirit. It s the hope and expectation of the faithful. I hope for it. I expect that gift. It is neither warranted by my efforts nor limited by my frailties. God s grace and human activity working together in faith. That s how we become Christ.
God provides the grace. And we practice love. And as we have already noted, practice makes perfect. Paul wrote these words to his friends in Philippi as they were struggling with what it meant to be the church. There was no centuries long tradition that they had to refer to. They had to define what it meant to be church. And one of Paul s geniuses with his theology and the way that he shared it with people is to help them see themselves in this new thing called the kingdom that they were proclaiming and this new fellowship called the church that brought them together. All the things, Paul says, I once thought were so important, they are going. Knowing Christ and experiencing new life; that s what I m working for. I m not saying that I have this all together. I m not there yet, but I m well on my way. I m reaching out for Christ because he has so wondrously reached out for me. My comprehension, my commitment, it isn t perfect, but I know the path. I m letting go of what s past. It s all behind me. I m straining and reaching out to grasp what s in front of me. That s the joy, reaching out for what s in front of us. Because God is urging us forward. Christ is waiting to welcome us. Keep focused on that goal. And it is a goal, Because there is so much celebrating waiting for us, not just in the perfection that we realize as we are carried in the arms of Christ to an eternal home. No, that celebration is here and now as we live a life that becomes Christ.
God provides the grace and we practice the love. And Brothers and Sisters, what we do together is to remind ourselves that practice makes perfect: the practice that we share in worship; the practice that we share in work and in mission and in witness and in caring for one another. That s the practice that matters. Perfection, remember, is the habitual disposition of the soul which nourishes those virtues which were in Christ. Why was Christ so perfect to us? What is it that his life is flawless? Why is it something that we want to imitate? Because it is a life of perfect virtue: the habits, the behavior, the values of one person channeled into a life that reflects it without sin, without limitations. Jesus had vision. The vision that he had is the vision of God s perfect arrangement of all things.
When Peter says you are the Christ, Peter says You are the one who can lead us to understand what God is doing, what God has done and what God is promising through us. The virtue of Christ is the vision that he has, and then the vision that the disciples are granted on Pentecost to see what God was doing and to understand themselves as being a part of it. The vision of Christ now becomes our vision, our vision for ourselves, our vision for our fellowship, our vision in which no one is told You are sitting in my seat. Our vision in which no one wonders what the other person just put in the offering plate. Our vision is that which says, I don t even know who that person is, but I can write them a card, I can pray for them. I can do things that make Christ real to them. That s vision. And it s not just Christ s vision, it s our vision and that vision is translated into intention. When I decide to do stuff in the name of Christ, it is an intentional thing. It is not by accident that we love each other. The intention is clear: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Not to do whatever I want. Christ strengthens me to do what God s will is. And as I decide, time and time again to do that, I draw closer to Christ, because one of the virtues of Christ is he never deviates, it is always the same, over and over and over again: love God; love your neighbor; love the Samaritan woman; love the blind person; love the lame person. It is always the same. It s a one note song. He s a one-trick pony. Always practice faith, love and holiness. Those three thing: faith, love, holiness and holiness just another word for perfection.
He is tenacious. He has tenacity. He gets confronted so many times by people who don t see it, don t believe it, don t want to hear it. Does he back down? Does he ever say Well, okay, there s a little bit too much conflict here. I think I m going to step back. No, never! He sets his face even at the end of his life to go to Jerusalem. He is tenacious in his commitment because he realizes that time is running out. Do you know that time is running out on you. It is on me. I m 59! Many of you would say, Time already ran out on you, Dude. You re It s running out. Do you feel it? Do you hear it? I m not upset by it. It doesn t bother me. I love being 59. Beats the alternative. He sets his face to go to Jerusalem. He knows that his life is going to come to an end. He has a very high probability of dying in Jerusalem. And yet he won t back down. In the garden, he won t back down. Being whipped by the soldiers, he won t back down. He won t back down. He sets his face like flint, the King James Version says, Stone faced he goes. That s tenacity. He understands what God s will is. It is not because he has perfection in understanding, he just has faith, and in that faith, there is the bridge between what I know and what I hope for. That s understanding. I will never understand all the mysteries of God, but if you have a Kingdom heart, the insight and understanding just flows from it. You don t need to know everything to become Christ. You just need to know Christ. And then you can see it in his face. It s always so disturbing to me that all the pictures we have of Jesus are so serene. Do you ever thing the dude laughed? Did he ever have a good time? When the children come and they crawl up into his lap and he enfolds them, do you think he was or was he laughing with them? Was he smiling? Did he enjoy their company?
Enjoyment. Live in my love, he says, So that your joy may be complete. You and I are built for joy and the real joy of our life is to live it as we become Christ. Perfection is the habitual disposition of the soul which nourishes those virtues, those things we see in Christ, and they are plain in him. V ision I ntention R epetition T enacity U nderstanding E njoyment These are the things that we see in Christ. These are the things that the Spirit will grant to us. These are the ways in which we move forward in our journey. God will provide the grace and we will practice love. Why? Because practice makes perfect. And God expects no less from you and me. And may our lives be an offering. Let us present our tithes and offerings at this time.
Benediction In the heritage of our tradition, Christian perfection is nothing more and nothing less than becoming Christ. How possible is that? God provides all the grace that we need to do his will and we choose to practice, we have a vision, we have an intent, we have the responsibility to practice love. And the practice that we share together brings us closer and closer to the perfect joy he intends for us. Live in my love, Christ says, So that your joy may be complete. We complete one another with the love that we share. Thanks be to God. Be perfect. Amen.