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Dear Church Family:
In our Bible study recently, one of the participants shared how easy it is for her to become distracted by the news of the day. I knew exactly what she meant. I am, you might say, a recovering political junkie.
As we move closer toward what will almost certainly be a tumultuous election season, Jesus’ followers are confronted every day with the challenge of being faithful witnesses in a disordered and fretful world. For some, the temptation is to get caught up in our culture’s division and anxiety, too often exhibited in our leaders and magnified by the media. For others, the temptation is to disengage and retreat into a cloistered world of self-protection and self-interest.
But neither absorption into the world nor disengagement from the world will make us faithful witnesses to God’s solution to our human troubles. Christians sometimes say that we are to be “in the world but not of it.” This isn’t an exact biblical quote, but it does express the heart of Jesus’ prayer for his disciples: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be sanctified.” (John17:15-19) Jesus had entered and lived in the physical world as the One set apart (sanctified) for God’s holy work to save the world. Having completed his work as God’s Son in the world, he now prepared his followers for his return to the Father by praying that these who had been saved out of the world’s corruption would now be sanctified and enabled to carry on his rescue mission in the world.
Christians are called to live our lives as witnesses to the saving truth and love that Christ brought to the world during his earthly ministry. Knowing this, Jesus prayed that we would be “sanctified” by the truth as he was sanctified. If Jesus’ disciples today are to fulfill his prayerful purposes for us, we must reclaim our confidence in the sanctifying work of God’s grace that equips and strengthens us to live faithfully as his witnesses and citizens of God’s kingdom here on earth. Earlier in John’s gospel, Jesus equates this sanctification with the work of the Holy Spirit in us (see 14:15ff, 14:25-27, 16:5-15). Now, Jesus’ prayer makes clear that, by the grace of the Spirit at work in us, we are no longer enslaved to this world. By that same grace, we are sent into the world with the good news that makes all things new.
The early Methodists were Christ-centered and Spirit-filled. “Entire sanctification” (or “perfect love”) was their aim. It was a vision of the Christian life that made them both different from the world and committed in practical ways to the world’s betterment. Even as John Wesley preached tirelessly the gospel of repentance, “new birth,” and “holiness of heart and life,” he also exhorted the Methodists who embraced this “full salvation” in turn to preach the good news, and to build schools, visit prisoners, rescue addicts, and care for strangers and each other with an uncommon love. People who were saved out of the world’s corruption through the ministry of the Methodists quickly learned that God had called them out not only to make them new but also to send them back into the world to rescue others. As their lives were transformed by the love of God expressed in Christian community, they became ambassadors of Christ with a mission to the love-starved world. Freed from the world, they were now freed for the world’s salvation.
It turns out that sanctification is a most practical doctrine—changed lives changing lives, by the life of God at work in and through us.
As Jesus’ disciples within the Methodist tradition, the disciples of Jesus at Pender UMC are well-situated to provide an alternative to the false choices of withdrawal or absorption that ever tempt Christians living in the troubled world. Yes, we may recoil from the disturbing daily news, but we will not lash out in anger or shrink in fear. Rather, with our Lord we pray to have our minds and hearts sanctified in Christ and transformed through the life of the Spirit, so that we may play our part as witnesses to God’s life-changing grace for all people everywhere.
In the spirit of sanctified practicality, a team from our Pender family will depart next week for Philippi WV with a host of gifts to partner with others in building homes for the poor of that community. At the same time, other Pender members will welcome and host a team of Mennonite Christians from Harrisonburg who are walking to Washington to participate in a March for Peace in the Middle East. This Sunday I will preach on the prophetic witness of Jesus and John the Baptist, the ministry of truth-telling, that is an essential part of the church’s witness in every time and place. Last week we held a wonderful outreach ministry of Vacation Bible School. This week our Reaching New People cluster will plan upcoming outreach activities to more of our neighbors in our community. In all these ways, and so many more, Jesus’ disciples at Pender are living out and spreading our witness to the new life in Christ and through the Spirit that the Father desires for all people.
As we begin another year together in Christ’s service, we freely acknowledge that we face great challenges to being faithful witnesses in our bad news world. But our hope is not in this world. Our hope is in the good news of the One who in grace came from heaven to earth to raise us from earth to the life of heaven. By the sanctifying Spirit of grace, we are being changed to become a part of God’s solution. As we give our lives and our fellowship to the work of God in and among us, we will rejoice in the many ways we have to witness to God’s remedy for the world’s brokenness, and we will pray for even greater clarity and confidence to follow Christ into the world with the lived message of God’s transforming love.
The world may fret, but the joyful work of God’s grace-given and grace-giving people continues for the glory of God and the salvation of the world. I am eternally grateful to be appointed for another year to walk with you in Christ’s holy way and to serve in the Lord’s great mission in our time and place.
Pastor Bruce
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