In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. On earth God placed Human Beings. To us he gave great power over earth and over the creatures in it, so that we would control the entire planet. And God offered us life.
But we desired to become gods ourselves. We sought power. We sought power through knowledge, and we took the power. But with that power came responsibility which we could not handle. Responsibilities which we could not fulfil cut us off from God and from life. Our foolishness tempted God to destroy us, to eliminate humanity from creation. But God did not.
What God creates is good. Despite our mistakes, God
began to claim us back. So God began to work among us.
God chose Abram from his father's house to begin a new
nation. His family, the Hebrew people, was chosen by God
to be a light to the nations
.
Isaiah 49:6.
Through them the world would learn about God. The Hebrews
were to know God as others did not. They were to obey God
as others did not.
To the Hebrews God gave his commandments. To then God sent judges and prophets to help them understand God's laws. But the Hebrews were like every other people: They sinned. The became arrogant about their special relationship with God. They forgot the responsibilities that God gave them. They tried to find an easier life than that of being God's chosen children. So God punished the Hebrews, often using the nations around them to bring God's punishment. The Hebrews were sometimes attacked and conquered, and even carried off to a foreign capital.
Yet God did not forget God's people. Where once God's
prophets cried out that because they have rejected
the law of the Lord … I will send a fire upon
Judah, and it shall devour the strongholds of
Jerusalem
Amos 2:5,
later God would instruct them to comfort my people,
speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her
warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that
she has received from the Lord's hand full measure for
all her sins.
Isaiah 40:1.
The Lord cared for the chosen Hebrews, for they were
God's people and the Lord was their God.
Exodus 6:7, inter alia.
God chose a people from all the peoples of the earth. And when the right time had come God brought forth from that people a son, a son of humanity and a son of God. Through that son, God offered us once again the choice of life. But what we had rejected in the beginning we rejected again. The messenger of God, who was God, we executed. Yet even this did not end God's efforts to turn us back to God. In fact, that execution is now seen as only the beginning. For God reversed all that we thought we knew, and in the resurrection demonstrates God's power and God's determination to have us decide again the question we decided so badly before.
With Pentecost, the special value of Jesus' life and
death became the foundation for our new work. God's gift
of life appeared in the world on tongues of fire and the
church, the body of Christ
Ephesians 1:23, inter alia,
was begun. The church's task, our work, is to proclaim
the Good News to the whole creation
Mark 16:15,
to bring our neighbors to God, to be Christ to the world.
We believe that we, the church, empowered by God's spirit,
are working on this task.
Estranged from God, men and women wound themselves
and one another and wreck havoc throughout the natural
world. Human hopes for achieving the good are thwarted
so long as we seek to realize such ends apart from
God.
Discipline, ¶69, page 74.
In the world we can see around
us, the work of the church is sometimes so hidden as to
be all but unobservable. Even the church itself appears
to be less a fellowship of believers than an occasional
gathering of locl citizens. The active power of God
seems only a myth. But in the midst of our condition
of alienation, God's unfailing grace shows itself in
[God's] suffering love working for our redemption.
¶69, page 74.
We believe that the superficial appearance of the world
is not the whole story. We believe that we can show
God's love at work in the world.
In a world that seems governed by chance on the one hand
and passion on the other, seeing God's love requires a
knowledge of what to look for. This knowledge is,
finally, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But it is
a gift for which we may build the foundation. By showing
small samples of this love, we give the ability to
recognize greater love. This love is shown first of all
in the example of our own individual lives and then by
the example of the church set out in especially visible
ways. Christian teaching from its beginning has known
God's redemptive lovve in Jesus Christ … both in
personal experience and in the larger community of
believers called the Body of Christ.
¶69, page 75.
These things we can show.
Life in the
Spirit
means for individuals the life of prayer and
inward searching, but it also involves them in the
communal life of the church: in its corporate worship,
service and mission.
When we ourselves need to renew our vision, and when we wish to set up a living illustration of the world of love, we may go apart for a while, retreating for a time from the battleground of the world. This is what we do when we pause in a quiet place for prayer. This is what when we organize a weekend retreat in a church basement. This is what we do we do when we go to church camp. These activities give us moments or days when we can find some aspects of God's love less mixed with daily life. From these times we take away not only renewed strength but also a renewed vision, a restored ability to see that love whose image had become broken and cloudy.
[W]e join our fellow Christians, affirming within the
¶69, page 75.
To teach the shape of such a love we
form a living illustration of it, a simple design in
which the pattern of love cannot be missed or mistaken.
We draw a living picture of a world where Christians are
one in Christ, where our declarations are both sure and
happy, in which our lives are certainly bathed in the
love of God, where creation is good, where there is the
desire for true community, and where our impulses to
serve bear fruit. Such is the picture we paint.
communion of saints
our oneness in Christ. With
them we gladly declare that the foregiveness of sins and
life eternal are ours through the power of God's
invincible love. In this love we live and move and have
our being. In this love God made and sustains the good
earth and all creation. In this love [God] creates in
our hearts a desire for true community and arouses our
impulses to engage in unselfish service.
Our illustrations of life are not perfect, for we are not perfect. But as by the gift of sight we are able to recognize a real forest from a drawing of it, so too by the gift of vision the illustration of a loving community may teach the ability to recognize the love pervading the world. This is our hope.
The picture we provide will be a simplified world; there
will be fewer people, a smaller space, and many
difficulties will be solved in advance. But when we form
a little Christian world aprart from the rest of life,
there are some aspects of reality which we do not want
to lose. These are the parts which we wish to
illustrate, to emphasize and point out. What parts of
life are important for illustrating God's invincible
love
? Foremost of course must be the constant
awareness of the presence of Christ. This can be seen in
the attention given to scripture, the constancy of
prayer, and in the continuing joy and certaiinty felt by
the people. This is God's loving action in human
existence through the ever-present agency of the Holy
Spirit. Grace, so understood is the spiritual climate
and enironment surrounding all human life at all times
and in all places.
¶69, page 76.
We wish also the emphasize God's endowment of each
person with dignity and moral responsibility.
¶69, page 76.
This means that each person in our
little world has both a place of respect and a
recognizable task of service to the rest. This
responsibility comes to us much as responsibility came
to the Hebrews: as a direct result of our reciving
special gifts from God. Since God gives each person a
special place in God's sight, we also have special
services to perform. In fact, the special office God
grants us is to do our special acts of service.
Christian experience is not only deeply private and
inward; it is also corporate and active. The Bible knows
nothing of solitary religion. God's gift of liberating
love must be shared if it is to survive.
¶69, page 80.
Perhaps the most cherished doctrinal emphasis among
United Methodists is that faith and good works belong
together. … On the one side, faith is intensely
personal …. On the other side, … inward
assurance, if genuine, is bound to show itself outwardly
in good works.
¶69, page 77.
This, then, is the world of love which we see. This is the picture we help others to see. This is the living image we create when, as learners and teachers, we gather away from the rest of the world.
Learning is discovering, playing, and sharing. All learning begins with the encounter of the new and unknown. The ideas, object, and actions which are discovered are probed, seen, turned, stressed, touched until they are familiar, until they are understood. Learning is completed when the newly familiar is shared, when the images that intruded on us are so mastered that we can bring them to another person. Learning is the way through which we come to terms with the world.
The act of discovery is the coming face to face with the unexpected, the new, the unknown. It is having an intruder appear within the realm of my knowledge. It is becoming aware of what existed beside you without your knowing; it is the opening of eyes, or the turning of the head.
What is only seen is not known. The baby takes a block and touches. He grasps it, moves it, tastes it. He drops is, throws it, pounds it on the floor. He looks at it. He turns it around. He casts it away. He learns through all this what a block is. Just the same way we take what we discover and twist it, turn it, bend it, get under it, stand over it, go around it. With our eyes, our ears, all our senses, but especially with our minds, we play with what we find until it becomes familiar, until we know it. Whether it is a leaf or an idea, we have not learned until its image has been reflected throughout our minds, bouncing back and forth, turned and rolled about.
Yet knowledge cannot be believed until it is shared. Sharing completes the cycle of learning: When I share what I learn I both prove to myself my own understanding and confirm the plausibility of my conclusions by the test of another mind. Without communication, learning is incomplete. With sharing, learning is either confirmed or begun again.
Our intent is to teach about the whole of human life,
for we are teaching religious understanding. All
religious experience affects all human experience; all
human experience affects our understanding of religious
experience.
¶69, page 81.
Each thing that is
discovered, reflected upon, and shared is a part of
learning. No part can be ignored. No part can be
dismissed or shoved aside. Every aspect of being alive
is a part of learning. Every part of being alive can be
used to teach God's presence and God's love.
The leader is the one of us who knows the path. We will follow the leader because we have faith that she will take us where we want to go. A leader is a guide, a unifying force, and a salve for our uncertainty. Because we trust her, we yield to the choice that she makes even when we would have chosen another way.
The leader embodies our unity, representing to us a common hope and goal. The leader is one who will show us a better way when we choose foolishness. We have confidence in the leader because she has confidence in herself. Bucause our faith in her is constantly confirmed, we will follow and support our leader even when we do not understand. The leader is with us, understands us, suffers with us, shares with us.
Jesus Christ is the great leader. He has chosen us among his followers to help him lead. We are confident of our leading because we are following Jesus. We can be trusted because our faith is with him. We are one with our followers because we are all following Jesus together.
Our goal is the Kingdom of God. This is our unity. Our path is the footsteps of Christ. Because we have taken a few more steps along the road we are asked to turn and help some who follow us. Because we serve them, we are leaders. Because we are sure the light we are given will not fail, those who follow us are also certain, and we are accepted.
We follow one road; those who follow travel with us.We support each other. We move together. If we falter, they falter. When one who is with us steps off the trail, we call him back, just as our leader calls us.
We are not afraid. We are not uncertain. Not because we already know the trail, but because if we misstep we can call out and find the path again. Because we are sure of this, those who come after us are not afraid to follow. This faith is not ours alone. We teach it to those who come with us, so that they may be called to lead those who come after them. We lead not just to the step behind to where we are walking, so that we may all be followers together. Amen.
Paragraph 69, "Our Theological Task": Citations are to The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church in the edition of 1980. It was originally quoted from an earlier edition.