August 17th, 2025 - "Bible on Broadway - Les Misérables: Unlimited Grace" - Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the Sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

If you have questions related to what you hear today or just want to find

out more about the ministries of First United Methodist Church, please visit us

online at FUMCbentonville.org or check us out on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.

Michelle Morris: Just posted on Facebook, shared it out to the world

and said, "Do you hear the people sing? If you watch, you will."

Thank you all so much for all your amazing work.

We are in this series, by the way, my name's Michelle Morris.

I'm the lead pastor here.

It is a joy to be in worship with you, and we're in a series in which we're looking

at the Bible on Broadway and we're looking at, at a particular biblical story.

In comparison with a story from a Broadway musical, and today we're

gonna be looking at the story of the Apostle Paul alongside Le Miserable.

And as I've mentioned, since you hear roughly different music,

although you heard do your, the people singing in all three spaces.

If you want to make a Broadway day of it, I'm doing different sermons.

There's one for nine and 10 10 and there's one for 11 o'clock.

So nine and 10, 10 heard the limits of the law and you all get unlimited grace.

So, uh, with that in mind here now this passage from Philippians, so then my

brothers and sisters be glad in the Lord.

It's no trouble for me to repeat the same things to you because

they will help keep you on track.

Watch out for the dogs.

Watch out for people who do evil things.

Watch out for those who insist on circumcision, which is really mutilation.

We are the circumcision.

We are the ones who serve by God's spirit and who boast in Christ Jesus.

We don't put our confidence in rituals performed on the body that will have good

reason to have this kind of confidence.

If anyone else has reason to put their confidence in physical advantages.

I have even more.

I was circumcised on the eighth day.

I am from the people of Israel and the tribe of Benjamin.

I'm a Hebrew of the Hebrews.

With respect to observing the law, I'm a Pharisee with

respect to devotion to the face.

I harass the church with respect to righteousness.

Under the law.

I'm blameless.

These things were my assets, but I wrote them off as a loss for the sake of Christ.

But even beyond that, I consider everything a loss in comparison with

the superior value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, I have lost everything

for him, but what I lost, I think of as sewer trash, so that I might

gain Christ and be found in him.

In Christ.

I have a righteousness that is not my own, and that does not come from the law, but

rather from the faithfulness of Christ.

It is righteousness of God that is based on faith.

The righteousness that I have comes from knowing Christ, the

power of his resurrection and the participation in his sufferings.

It includes being conformed to his death so that I may perhaps reach the

goal of the resurrection of the dead.

It's not that I have already reached this goal or have already been perfected,

but I pursue it so that I may grab hold of it because Christ grabbed

hold of me for just this purpose.

Brothers and sisters.

I myself don't think I've reached it, but I do this one thing.

I forget about the things behind me and reach out for the things ahead of me.

The goal I pursue is the prize of God's upward call in Christ Jesus.

So all of us who are spiritually mature should think this will way,

and if anyone thinks differently, God will reveal it to him or her only.

Let's live in a way that is consistent with whatever level we have reached.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Lord, open our hearts, our minds, and our eyes that we might see and know

the word you have for us this day.

In your holy name we pray, amen.

We throw around grace as a term all the time in Methodism.

It is something that centers our identity, but we don't often stop and define it.

So I have defined it for you as God's loving presence

with us throughout our lives.

But a kind of good official Methodist definition is the

undeserved, unmerited, and loving action of God in human existence.

The undeserved and unmerited loving action of God in human existence.

What that means is there's no way to earn God's grace.

You don't have to be perfect.

There's not a set of laws that you follow that make you a recipient of grace.

You already have God's grace, but that's a hard thing to live into.

For so many of us.

To give ourselves permission to receive that kind of love

can be a very difficult thing.

Paul talks about that.

If you're struggling with this, God will send you a, a revelation, an explanation,

a moment, and I wanna share with you my moment that I got to really experience

the fullness of what God's forgiveness and grace must be like when I was an

intern pastor, trying my best to be the best pastor I could possibly be.

We had a schedule for who covered hospital visits.

We all had a day during the week and then we switched out and got a beeper

back in the day for the weekends.

And I was on call for the weekend and I'd gotten this call and I'd checked in

and this gentleman was having surgery Sunday morning, which is a terrible time

to have surgery, by the way, especially if you want the pastor to be present.

But I thought, I'm gonna be super pastor.

And I'm gonna go before worship and pray with this guy, right?

So I go to pray with this man, and I knew not very much about him, but

I did know that he had dementia.

So I go to pray with him and I come into his room and I tell him, I'm here to

pray with you before you have surgery.

And he says to me, I'm not having surgery today.

And I said, oh, yes, you are.

I got a phone call from your daughter.

You're having surgery today.

It's okay.

You don't have to be scared or worried.

You're gonna have surgery today and I'm gonna pray with you.

And he goes, no, I don't think I'm having surgery today.

And I said, no, you're having surgery today.

You guys are already anticipating where this is going.

You're having surgery today.

I'm gonna pray with you.

So I pray with him and I come in.

And I go through worship, feeling all super, like, I'm awesome.

I went out and prayed to this guy before surgery, before worship.

How cool is that?

Um, yeah, he didn't have surgery and it was, it's not scheduled.

And it had been moved and he was actually switching hospitals and

I found that out after worship.

And I felt so embarrassed and so ashamed that I had made a man who probably also

regularly feels very vulnerable and like he doesn't know what is going on.

I made him feel more like that.

Because I wouldn't listen to him and be present with him in that moment.

My hospital days were Fridays, so I prayed all week that he would get

dismissed from the hospital before Friday

so that I would not have to see him again.

He got dismissed from that hospital.

We got moved to another hospital, so I still had to go visit him.

And I get there and praise God when I walk in his room, he's out for

rehab so I don't have to see him.

So I go to leave my card on his table and the nurse walks in and

goes, oh, are you here to see him?

And I said, yeah, but he's not here.

It's okay.

I can go.

And she goes, no, he's just finishing up rehab.

He'd love for you to stay.

Lord, lord, Lord, I am not gonna get out of this.

So.

The man comes back into his room, I'm hanging my head and I said, hello, sir.

I'm Pastor Michelle here to see you.

And he goes, oh, it's so nice to meet you.

Yes, that is God's grace and forgiveness.

However, you think you have failed, however you think you've screwed up, God

forgets it and is so happy to meet you.

That, for me, helped me understand grace.

We get to see grace played out beautifully both in the life of Jean Bel John

and in the life of the Apostle Paul.

John Bejan was in prison for 20 years for stealing a loaf of bread for his

hungry nephew, 20 years, and he served his whole sentence, but he skipped out

on parole and he was headed down this path that was going to continually

get him in trouble with the law.

He was taken in.

By a bishop of the church fed and restored, and Val Jonn repaid the bishop

by stealing the silver from the church.

He got caught and he says to the authorities that catch him, no, no.

The bishop gave me this silver, which the authorities don't believe.

So they bring him back to the bishop and says, this man

says you gave him this silver.

And the bishop says.

Of course I did.

But how could you leave and forget the best parts?

And he takes the two tall candlesticks and hands them to

Jeong and the authorities leave.

And the bishop tells him this, that he has received grace.

But remember this, my brother seeing this a higher plan.

You must use this precious silver.

To become an honest man.

He gives Val John a chance to step into that grace and mercy and to live as

one of grace and mercy, and he does.

He becomes a man of great mercy when Jve, the inspector who's hunting

him down, figures out that this man who has passed as the mayor, I

mean, he's been the mayor of a town and been a good mayor of the town.

Jve has caught up with him and has figured out.

That's John, Val John that I've been hunting because he's skipped parole.

He then gets out of that because they find another man that they're convinced that

is Val Jonn, and they're bringing him up on charges and putting him back in prison.

And Val Jonn hears about this.

This other man is about to serve his sentence, and he's the mayor of this town

and living a really good life and has just made a commitment to raise Cosette.

One of his workers who died, one of his children, he's just made this commitment.

He has good reason not to admit that he is Vja and to let this other man take

his place so he can take care of Cosette.

But instead he goes to the court and admits that he's vja.

So this other man will not suffer, and then he has to go grab Cosette

and go back on the run and create a new identity for himself again.

But he does, and he raises Cosette.

And he saves the man she's in love with Marius.

When the revolution breaks out and he is injured, he saves Marius.

And then when he is given the opportunity to execute Jve, who's been caught by

the revolutionaries and exposed as a spy, this man who's hunted him for

decades, who has extended him, no grace.

Who has extended him, no mercy, who has said to him as he's standing

before him, you cannot set me free.

I will continue to hunt you down.

And JE cuts his ropes and lets him go.

VE sings about JE falling from grace,

but actually Valon fell into grace.

Paul sought to persecute Christians.

He was present at the murder of Steven, and he was on his way

to Damascus to at least arrest more Christians, maybe kill them.

He says he was a persecutor of the faith and then he encounters Jesus on that road.

But it's not just Jesus that he encounters Jesus who blinds him.

And makes him dependent on others to get him to safety.

He is a recipient of grace from Ananias.

Jesus has appeared before Ananias and said, go to Saul

and heal him of his blindness.

Now, Jesus is asking Ananias to go before the man that he knows is

trying to arrest or maybe kill him.

Go before that man and make it so he can see you again.

And Anani says, alright, Jesus, if that's what you want.

So he goes and he heals Saul.

And Saul then can really see, can really see.

And then Saul is not just the recipient of Ananias Grace and Mercy, but he's

the recipient of others like Barnabas.

Barnabas, the encourager encourages Saul.

To be this apostle for Jesus, this man who turns out to spread Christianity farther

than anyone else, and in more places than anyone else, is encouraged by Barnabas

healed by Ananias encountered with Jesus.

He's a recipient of all of that grace.

All of that mercy and becomes an apostle to the Gentiles, the very

people that he would have kept out.

He make sure they are brought in those stories.

Speak to the transformative power of God's grace.

If we can receive it.

If we can receive it.

Think of the great good that Paul and Bajan did.

I've just shared their stories.

Think of the great good that they did.

We stand today on the foundation of what Saul slash Paul did, and they are

profound examples that God's grace is true freedom that God's grace helps us

really see, and that God's grace allows us to deeply love, but we have to be

willing to live into it to receive it.

Jve could not, JVE could not, he could not bear.

He could not bear that Val Jean set him free.

He couldn't bear it.

And Saul slash Paul, he shares that he continues to struggle with it,

that he needed that revelation to hold onto, and that he recognizes

that we will all need a revelation.

And I'll tell you that I still sometimes struggle with it.

Part of the reason that that moment was so important to me was in my year of serving

as a intern pastor, I was told the one thing that will sink your ministry based

on all, you know, we have to do all this stuff, psychological batteries and all

kinds of things to go into the ministry.

And the thing that they flagged on me was not my PTSD that I'd

had from a school shooting.

That's not what they flagged.

Because I was in, I was in therapy and they knew I was doing the work on that.

The thing they flagged was, you are perfectionist and that

will kill your ministry because you're not gonna be perfect.

You're gonna make mistakes and you need to be able to extend the grace

that I love to give to all of you.

They told me I have to extend it to myself, and I know that this

is a struggle for some of you.

You're great at extending grace to others and not so great

at extending it to yourself.

So I want you to recognize that Paul and Valon learned to live into this

grace, but they struggled still,

but they constantly reset themselves around that grace and did what they could.

I struggle.

With receiving God's grace, but I reset myself and help myself remember

that that grace is available to me.

I don't have to earn it, it's given.

But I do encourage you all to find an image, a model, to seek that

revelation from God that helps you receive that grace as well.

I'll tell you in addition to the story that I have of the

man who was so happy to see me.

If you come in my office, you'll see a painting of a sheep dog on

my wall, and that helps me receive God's grace because I remind

myself that I am not the shepherd.

I'm not the shepherd.

The shepherd is perfect, not me.

I'm the sheep dog.

All right.

And the sheep dog is sometimes really good at following orders and sometimes really

good at keeping the sheep all riled up.

And sometimes the sheep dog's tired and needs a drink, and sometimes

the sheep dog chases butterflies.

But always the sheep dog gets to curl up the feet of the

shepherd and have her head padded.

Find something, some part of your story, some way of seeing God.

That helps you live into the power of God's unlimited grace to live

into the freedom and forgiveness that God gives to all of us because

that my friends is a life well lived.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Matt Nelson: Thanks for listening to the Sermon podcast from First United

Methodist Church in downtown Bentonville.

If you would like to let us know you were here, follow the link below to connect.

To participate in worship through giving, you can give online at fumcbentonville.org

,or on Venmo @FUMCBentonville.

FUMC Bentonville welcomes all.

Because we believe the communion table is God's table,

we invite everyone into our church family.

We welcome and celebrate every race, gender, gender identity, sexual

orientation, marital status, age, physical and mental ability, national origin,

economic station, and political ideology.

We come together in action and outreach, aspiring to follow Jesus' example of

radical hospitality, love, and grace as a transformative movement in our community.

Please join us for worship on Sunday mornings at 9:00 AM, 10:10 AM, and 11:00

AM, live, and on our YouTube channel.

Grace and peace.