November 17th, 2024 - "Corinthville: State of the Church" - 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 at First United Methodist Church, please

visit us online at FUMCBentonville.

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Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Amen.

Welcome to First United Methodist Church here in Bentonville.

My name is Michelle Morris, and I am the lead pastor here.

And we are.

Bringing to a close a series called Corinthville in which we've been looking

at how ancient Corinth and modern Bentonville has some things in common.

And today we're going to also look at kind of the state of this church and how well

we're doing it living into our mission.

And it turns out that the culture that Paul was working very hard to create

in Corinth is definitely a culture that this church has laid claim to.

And it's working diligently at and so you're going to hear about the relation

of those cultures As I read to you chapter eight from first corinthians

I will admit when it starts out you're going to wonder what in the world

does this have to do with bentonville?

So with that in mind here now the word of the lord Now concerning meat that

has been sacrificed to a false god.

We know that we all have knowledge Knowledge makes people arrogant,

but love builds people up.

If anyone thinks they know something, they don't yet know

as much as they should know.

But if someone loves God, then they are known by God.

So concerning the actual food involved in these sacrifices to false gods,

we know that a false god isn't anything in this world, and that there

is no God except for the one God.

Granted, there are so called gods in heaven and on earth, As there are many

gods and many lords, however, for us believers, there is one God the Father.

All things come from Him and we belong to Him.

And there is one Lord Jesus Christ.

All things exist through Him and we live through Him.

But not everybody knows this.

Some are eating this food as though it really is food sacrificed to

a real idol because they were used to idol worship until now.

Their conscience is weak because it has been damaged.

Food won't bring us close to God.

We're not missing out if we don't eat.

And we don't have any advantage if we do eat.

But watch out, or else this freedom of yours might be a

problem for those who are weak.

Suppose someone sees you, the person who has knowledge.

Eating in an idol's temple.

Won't the person with a weak conscience be encouraged to eat

the meat sacrificed to false gods?

The weak brother or sister for whom Christ died is destroyed by your knowledge.

You sin against Christ if you sin against your brothers and sisters and

hurt their weak consciences this way.

This is why.

If food causes the downfall of my brother or sister, I won't eat

meat ever again, or else I may cause my brother or sister to fall.

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.

My son had the same best friend all the way through elementary school when we

lived in Plano and I didn't actually meet his parents until the boys were

both in first grade and their parents, the Corteses, invited myself and my

husband over one night to meet us because they were very excited to meet

their son's best friend and his parents.

This invitation happened to come to during Lent.

And that year for Lent, my Lenten discipline was to give up meat.

Well, I walked into this family's home, this family that was so

excited to be able to host us and welcome us and get to know us.

And they, in all of their wonderful Hispanic hospitality, had a huge spread of

food, almost all of which included meat.

I had a question before me.

Am I going to eat this food?

In Corinth, as we experienced when we went on the journey, we saw the Temple

of Apollo, and it still stands in the center of the ruins of Corinth, and

it's sort of at a raised position, and it's definitely the most ornate

of the remaining buildings left there.

And then we also saw Ray, when he preached earlier in this series, he showed us a

picture of a temple high up on a mountain.

That is Aphrodite's Temple.

So in the both central part, most dominant building in the town, um, As

well as the building that overlooked, kind of overshadowed the space, we

have two temples to two different gods.

The very reality of the architecture of the place reminded this people every

day, every time they stepped out, every time they looked around, that they

were a people that worshiped many gods and was expected to worship many gods.

In the midst of this comes Christianity, who lays claim to the fact that

we will worship only one god.

God, only the true God.

It is a direct cultural challenge to the very reality that is around them.

And so that in itself created an obstacle for Christianity to have to face.

And then Paul, as their pastor, faced the same challenge that Jesus faced

and that every pastor faces, which is that as long as you have a congregation

of two or more, you have people at different in their faith journey.

And you have to try to meet those people in the places where

they are in their faith journey.

What Paul is sharing in this passage that I just read from you is that he

has some that are all in on one God.

They've got it.

They understand they have adopted this reality that there is only one Lord

in And so they understand that they can eat the meat sacrificed to idols

because it doesn't have any meaning.

It doesn't really go to anything.

It's false.

All it is is just a really good steak.

And they want to enjoy their really good steak.

But they also have people around them who are just trying to grasp this reality.

Trying to turn around from this way of life that's the only

one that they've ever known.

And that is so contrary to everything that is surrounding them.

To reject the idea that There are a multitude of gods

and worship solely one God.

Instead of taking this God, Jesus Christ, and just adding Jesus

into the worship, they're now told to reject all the other worship.

So, when they see other Christians taking of the meat sacrificed to

idols, it is confusing to them.

Because they think, wait a minute, they told us not to worship other gods, but

here they are doing the practice that shows that they are worshiping other gods.

And they're getting confused and they don't know what it is exactly

they're supposed to be following.

And that is what Paul is trying to get people to recognize that

they are becoming a stumbling block to people new to the faith.

The reality is Christianity is a faith where the longer that we follow Christ,

the less it is about us and our comfort and the more it is about others.

We see this in the preaching of Jesus over and over when he talks about we

leave the 99 to go and save the one.

In the story of the prodigal son, where the elder brother rightfully says,

Hey, I've been here this whole time.

I ought to get some attention.

And the father says, I love you.

I love you.

But we have to celebrate this one who has come home.

We have to make the party about him.

And we see that same sentiment echoed over and over and over in 1 Corinthians.

There's one, there's a passage we didn't cover in this series that's in 23, in

which Paul says, I will be all things to all people to reach them for Jesus Christ.

He's not about his own comfort, his own desire of what he wants to be.

He's going to meet people where they are and be who they need him to be.

And we did talk about the passage where people are showing up and eating all the

food and some are not even able to partake of the Lord's Supper because of that.

So he says, you're just going to have to not consume all the food.

Be a little hungry for a minute so that we can all come to the table together.

And then Ray briefly mentioned this in his sermon, but I will go

back to it in the passage in 6.

When Paul is telling all women who will pray and prophesy to cover your heads.

That is often been understood as a kind of misogynist move, but in fact what it is.

is the fact that the women who have left from being a temple prostitute, where

they had to shave their heads, it was one of the markers to let people know,

I'm a prostitute, you can come to me.

They want to leave that life.

So the only way to keep from being propositions is to cover their heads.

And Paul is telling everyone, every woman in the community, cover your heads

so that your sisters don't feel shame.

So that the ones that are making a deep sacrifice.

Feel loved and walked alongside of.

It's not an act of misogyny.

It's an act of care and inclusion.

And then Paul's telling people, give up your stake.

It's not that important.

It's more important that people not get confused about

who it is that they worship.

My friends, that is also a commitment of this church.

This church has laid claim to the identity that we will be a

church where all are welcome.

What I will tell you, though, is that as you spend more and more time here,

decisions will be made that will be less and less for your comfort,

and more and more for the comfort of the people coming behind you.

The strange thing about it being a church where all are welcome is that sometimes

we will all feel unwelcome, because what we are doing is making space for

the other one who needs to know more.

Maybe Christ's love for the very first time in their life.

The great news is, is as you grow in your faith, the less you care

that you're not so comfortable.

Because the more committed you are to loving like Jesus.

It does mean that this work that we do here in the church is not like the world.

Instead, what we do is love like Christ.

Which means that we make decisions in different ways often than

the larger culture around us.

We too have a building that looms large in this town.

And that, at the heart of that building are decisions that are

made on the whole for profit.

There's nothing wrong with that.

That's what they are created for.

They are created for profit.

And so they are doing right by their reality by making decisions in that way.

We, on the other hand, sitting in that shadow, have to make decisions

that are based on their reality.

love.

So as part of this state of the church address that I'm giving, I'm going to

talk about some of the decisions that were made this year and how they were made.

So you can understand how that reality is lived out among us.

Sometimes we do make decisions that look an awful lot like the way they

make decisions down the street.

The difference is, we are not making those decisions for profit.

We are making those decisions because we are called to be

careful with our resources.

We are given a certain amount of resources to steward and we must

be responsible in that stewardship.

Now, all of the decisions that I'm going to talk about today are decisions

that someone has raised a question with me over the course of the year.

And I want to say right now, please continue to question decisions.

Please continue to do that because we need to be accountable to

making sure that we're making decisions for the right reasons.

Also, if you don't question your pastor, we've become a cult.

Let's not become a cult.

Okay, keep coming to me with questions.

All right.

So some of the decisions that were made very much with this idea

of the care for our resources.

One was the staff restructure that took place with the

departure of Tony Hendricks.

Tony was our business administrator.

We had a business administrator and she split part of her time and care for the

building part of her time in accounting.

And then we had a part time bookkeeper with her departure.

We took the salaries of those two positions and instead split them to

create a full time facilities manager and a mostly full time accountant.

She works 32 to 35 hours a week and she is paid hourly.

So depending on what number of hours of week she works, that that's We're

actually going to come in under what those two positions were budgeted at.

So it actually saves the church money to have made this decision, but it

also saves church money in another way.

We have had questions as to whether we need a full time facilities manager.

I've done the work to look at what point does a building need

a full time facilities manager.

And depending on who you agree as to the number of square footage in this building,

we may or may not fall in that threshold by sheer numbers of square footage.

We may fall slightly under that number based on our square footage.

However, that square footage figuring does not include land

that also has to be taken care of.

And it does not include the age of the building.

The older the building gets, the more attention a building needs.

General wisdom in building care and maintenance is once your building

reaches about the age of 40, it needs to be gutted entirely and redone.

This room is 70 years old.

It has not been gutted entirely.

The youngest part of the building is approaching 30.

And we got everything in between.

So, yes, we have hired a full time facilities manager because buildings of

this age, I promise you, I was the, the fill in facilities manager for the summer.

Something breaks in this building every single week.

And we can just keep calling in professionals to do the repair work,

or we can have someone on staff who can do some of the minor repair work,

and who eventually can get ahead of the repair work, and help us build a plan

for responsible replacement of things.

A few weeks ago, we introduced you to Jason, who is our Facilities Manager.

Unfortunately, Jason is no longer with us, but you have also already

met your Facilities Manager.

He Let us in our call to worship.

Matt, I'm gonna make you stand up.

And if you didn't get a sense of what a great facilities manager he's going

to be, he came up here, took care of business, got the heck off of the stage.

He and his family have been members here for about 20 years.

So his commitment to this church is deep and we're so grateful

to have him on staff with us.

So that's one decision and that's why it was made.

There have also been questions about the amount of time that Pastor

Ray has spent away from the church this year because he has been to

England to learn about John Wesley.

He's part of the Compelling Preaching Initiative.

He is required to do course of study in order to maintain his license,

and then he did go on the trip with us to the Journeys of Paul.

We are front loading Ray's training because Ray has, he says about seven

years before he's gonna retire.

I tell him he's ten.

He may not get some choice on that.

But we're front loading that so that the benefit will stretch out over the

course of the time that he is with us.

I will also add that it's not been to any expense of the church.

He has either received grants for those trainings or he

is paying for them himself.

And some of those grants that he has received, additional funding

has come to our church for being willing to be part of those programs.

So it is deeply to our benefit that we're making that

investment on the front end now.

Now, some decisions that we make look upside down.

They don't look like the smartest things to do.

One of the things that people ask me about, with a fair amount of

regularity, is why in the world, when we have two paid pastors, do

we let so many other people preach?

The other people we're preaching are not trained pastors, for the most part.

Although we do have some wonderful retired pastors who serve

in incredibly profound ways.

Y'all, if we don't let people come up here when they feel a

tug of a call to ministry, then we may as well shut the doors.

There won't be pastors to serve the church.

We have to do this.

And let me also make it perfectly clear, you pay me actually to order the church.

And ordering the church means identifying the future of the church.

The very fact that this church lets their children lead a whole worship

service six times a year is resulting in the fact that we may have about

four youth called to ministry.

And they know it now and will be able to serve their entire

working career as pastors.

And let's also be clear, this is not my pulpit.

This is God's pulpit.

And if I block access to it out of fear,

There are also sometimes questions about whether we are spending our

time as wisely in ministry as we can.

The wisest thing by numbers that we do is worship, because we see

the most number of people, we serve the most number of people.

But I will tell you that the vast majority of ministry is.

Wasted time.

When you add it up by efficiency numbers, it doesn't make any sense,

but ask the person who was prayed with at their hospital bedside if

that seemed like a waste of time.

Ask the person who came weeping into our office in the midst of a traumatic divorce

if us being there was a waste of time.

Ask the small group that's gotten together and worked through the struggles

of grief if that's a waste of time.

Ask the 10 to 12 people who engage in Bible study if it's a waste of time.

By the numbers it is, by the reality of the transformation that it makes in

people's lives, by the expression and love that they feel, it is no waste of time.

Love takes attention, takes time, takes space.

And at our core, we are built around an ethic of love.

Let's deal with the one last big change.

That was not a decision that we made, but a decision that was

made at the denominational level to make our denomination actually

fully inclusive to LGBTQ people.

I know that that makes some people in this room uncomfortable.

But I know what it has also done is made safe space for people

who have been hurt and rejected, not by Christ, but by the church.

And now they've found a place that says on our building, You are welcome here.

I am proud of you as a church for leaning into that reality.

And I am especially grateful for those of you that are uncomfortable with that.

And are still committed to love anyway.

Because the truth is disciples of Christ understand that the deeper we

get in our faith, the more we love like Christ, the less our comfort,

our privilege, even our dogma matters.

I will tell you that love beats dogma hands down every time.

Love beats dogma hands down every time.

Every time.

I'm gonna return you back to the scene where I walked into the Cortez's house.

And there is a bunch of meat in front of me.

And I will tell you that my dogma said you made a covenant before God

to honor this promise that you were going to give up meat during this time.

You made that covenant before God.

To eat meat will violate that covenant.

And I also heard Jesus yellin at me.

You dang better eat that meat!

You better not refuse the hospitality of this people.

You better not make them feel ashamed and different.

You better make them feel loved and appreciated and enter into

that relationship with them.

You better ignore that promise that you made so that these

people know they are loved.

My friends, this church does that over and over and over again.

When I got here, you were still wearing masks and you closed some because

the pandemic was still going on and you were worried about the safety

of your elderly and your children.

You empower your kids to lead.

As I said, all of the time, you encourage questions and you make space to disagree.

You, you know, because you have made that space, any given week, there

is a high likelihood that we have Jewish people and agnostics and

atheists worshipping in this space.

Because they feel safe coming in with their questions and wondering

about whether they have a place here.

That's phenomenal, you all.

You do that, and you agree to disagree and still come to this table together,

and take of this meal together, and make space for each other together.

A couple of weeks ago when I preached about how we needed to love one another,

right before that I had someone come up to me and say, I was on Reddit last

night on a thread that's about life in Bentonville, and someone posted on that

thread, are there any churches in this town that don't talk about politics all

the time and won't tell you how to vote?

And I will tell you that I have people ask me, why won't you tell us how to vote?

And I will say, because for me, while I understand some feel

that stakes are really high right now, it does feel that way.

For me, the higher stakes are that we need to remember how to love one another

and how to work alongside one another.

And that's the prophetic word that I will stand on, that we will love one another.

Telling you who to vote makes a difference for a few years.

Telling you to love one another impacts your eternity.

I'm going to bank on the eternity.

So, I don't tell you who to vote for.

I tell you to love one another.

The response in that Reddit thread, according to our parishioner, was,

You cannot believe the number of people who said, You have to go

to downtown Bentonville and go to First United Methodist Church.

Go to First United Methodist Church in downtown Bentonville.

That's where you need to go.

That's where you've gotta go.

They will welcome all and actually mean it.

That's where you need to be.

That's what you're doing, y'all.

That's what you're doing.

That's the difference that you're making and you recognize that in order

to do so, we're going to have to keep putting aside the things that make

us comfortable so someone else can come in the door and feel welcome.

We're going to have to accept that sometimes we will feel unwelcome

so someone else can feel loved.

Thanks be to God.

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.

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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 for

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

Please join us for worship on Sunday mornings at 9 and 11 a.

m., both in person and on Facebook live.

All are welcome, and we'd love to have you with us.

Grace and peace.