Who Are You Following?

We are starting a new sermon series today, “God and Us.” We are going to have the Gospel of Mark help us receive a greater understanding of what it means to be in a relationship with God. Today we ask the question “Who are you following?” Our scripture comes from Mark 7:1-8.

7 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus 2 and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4 When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.)

5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”

6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites as it is written:

“‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 7 They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ k

8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”

Please pray with me…

Our scripturepoints out a trap that we can fall into as individual followers of Jesus or as a church. We can get focused on the “human traditions,” those ways that we choose to follow God, that we can end up ignoring or forgetting about the actual “commands of God.”

We can endup being focused on the wrong thing. We can end up believing that the way we do church is the only way that God should be worshiped. We believethat we are the only ones who are right when it comes to how to believe and serve God.

We find thisoften within the infighting amongst denominations usually regarding communion and baptism. We have groups believing that their way is the only way instead of being focused on us having a big God. A God that doesn’t worry about these diversions away from where we should place our focus.

Jesus toldus where we should choose to focus. We should focus on making disciples. We should be telling those around us about who Jesus is, what he did for all people, and how God desires to have all people be in a relationship with him.

(Transition)

One of thereasons I am a United Methodist is that John Wesley the founder of Methodism didn’t focus on these divisions. He believed in what he considered items that are essential and unessential in a person’s belief as a follower of Jesus. The essential items were very few which leads wide open how a person could choose to follow Jesus.

The essentialsinclude an understanding that God is three in one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirt. The father is our creator, Jesus is our Savior, the Holy Spirit is our helper. These three entities are one working together to help humanity become the best selves that we can be.

This wouldalso include the understanding of grace. That it is through Jesus and his willingness to die as a sacrifice for us that allows us to be able to be saved from the power of sin. God also continues to offer us grace desiring for us to become closer to him.

The last part of that wouldbe a focus on righteousness. A willingness to follow God and to use his scriptures to allow us to become the best example of what it means to be a follower of Jesus that we can be.

(Transition)

This is wherethe nonessentials of our faith can enter in. What does it mean to be righteous? How should scripture be interpreted? We can differ with those around us on how we view God, worship God, serve God. We get to have God help us decide how we follow him.

This broadunderstanding of what could be considered unessential within our faith is what has led to much of the division within the United Methodist Church. We can believe how and who saved us while also having differing beliefs on many other theological questions.

What this means is that once you decide to become a follower of Jesus, we believe that God helps us decide how to follow him. This is notdefined for us in the United Methodist church. We need to have God help us to figure out how he wants us to follow him

This is why this is an important question for us to look at today. We have to be careful that we don’t allow the ways of the world to influence us to the point that it gets in the way of this journey to figuring out how we are to follow Jesus.

We needto have our focus be on following him. Our main priority needs to be on understanding who God is to us and how we are supposed to live out that understanding. How are we going to be the Christian, the follower of Jesus, that God wants us to be.

(Transition)

We havemany messages that we receive which tell us what we should believe. We have many people attempting to sway our opinion on what it means to be a “real Christian.” We have many differing views in society saying if you aren’t following God this way than you aren’t a true follower of God.

God offers a narrow door to enter into a relationship with him, saved by the Father through the son. But once you enter into his kingdom the room is wide. There are many ways that a person can be a follower of Jesus.

There aresome denominations that make it easier to know what you are to do. You need to believe this and this and this. You need to act this way and only this way. If you are out of line with this understanding of God, then you don’t belong here.

For some people these guard rails help them to be the person that God wants them to be. For other people they may believe some of these do’s and don’ts but not all of them. They need a different type of church.

God creates different types of churches to allow all people the chance to be able to discover how they can best become the follower of Jesus that they can be. I think Wesley would say that there are no bad denominations as long as they are following the essentials. Denominations can help define the non-essentials that a person believes.

(Transition)

What this also means is that choosing to follow Jesus is a journey. It never ends. We need to always be in connection with God and open to a new understanding of how we are supposed to follow God.

Our scripture has the religious authorities asking Jesus a question,

“Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”

These guys aren’t looking to learn anything from Jesus. They are attempting to use guilt and shame to get Jesus to get his disciples to change.

I want to point out that asking a question to someone who is worshipping differently or has different religious traditions than you do is OK. But if you are going to do it try to ask it in a way that isn’t demeaning,

They disagree with the religious practice, or lack of religious practice, of Jesus and his disciples; this leads them to call them out for doing something they believed was wrong.

Their hands were not unclean because they were dirty. They were considered unclean due to Jewish tradition. There was a fear of bringing the dirt from those that weren’t Jewish into the midst of the Jewish people. One of the traditions that started to prevent this was the ceremonial washing of hands to remove any of the uncleanness of those outside of the faith.

Jesus respondsto these religious leaders in a similar manner by calling them hypocrites. If ever there was a time for me to recommend that you don’t be like Jesus this would be it. Jesus is doing what he is doing to make the point that he is teaching a lesson different than what the Pharisees had previously taught. He was changing how the Jewish people should view their relationship with God.

(Transition)

It will dous no good to try to demean someone who has already been attempting to demean us. We spoke of this last week; it might feel good in the moment, but it does not help create relationships in the long term.

I would preferas the saying goes “killing someone with kindness”, or we choose to use the southern expression “Oh bless their hearts.” Let us decide that we are not going to offer back what is offered to us.

Let us makethe decision that we are going to tell those around us why we believe what we believe if we can or if we think it will do any good. Otherwise, we can just change the subject or thank them for their opinion.

I know this is not easy, but Jesus never said that following him would be easy in fact he often said the opposite. We are to choose to be people of love and forgiveness. Our first reading shows us what that means.

We are toworry more about being judged by God than we should worry about being judged by humanity. It goes back to our sermon title: “Who are you following?” If Jesus is our Lord, he should be the one we are trying to please.

The scripture goeson to say, “do not judge.” We please God when we believe that he is the judge. God is the one who judges right from wrong, truth from falsehood, good from bad. We may have our opinion, but we are not to be the ones that decide if what is being done is wrong.

(Transition)

You mightnot be right. You may be wrong in your understanding of God. You mayfind your views changing as you spend more time with God. It is betterto change our views quietly than to have to apologize for what we have done or said to someone else.

We don’t haveall the answers only God does. All we have to do is look at the Pharisees as our example. They believed they knew God, and knew what God expected from them. This led them to make sure the people were doing what they believed God wanted them to do.

Jesus cameand rocked their world. Jesus quoted scriptures that they had not considered. Jesus offered interpretations of scripture that they had not thought of. Jesus offered them a new understanding of how they were to be followers of God.

But they didn’tlike his views so they killed him. Instead of considering that he might have been right, they felt that his views would die with him. We are here as proof that they have not. Jesus lives through each one of us that accept him as our Lord and Savior.

I know I keep harping on it but in case you didn’t know this is an election year. People are going to think differently and choose a different candidate than you. God doesnot want your decision or their decision to be a relationship breaker. We can and should choose to love instead of being divided.

(Transition)

Our first readingends by pointing out what should matter to those of us that are attempting to follow Jesus: Being righteous, seeking peace, and having joy in the Holy Spirit.” These are what we should strive for.

Righteousness or being right with God. Except for rare exceptions such as was pointed out above, we should ask “what would Jesus do?” If I am choosing to follow Jesus than I should want to act like Jesus.

This remindsme of a child and a parent. Children often receive messages given to them by the parent. Example, my son was eating, got food on his face and didn’t have a napkin. I said “do this” (wipe arm across mouth). Amy was not pleased, and he continued to wipe his mouth this way sometimes even if he had a napkin. I got a dirty look every time. I taught him something he shouldn’t do.

Jesus willnever teach us something we shouldn’t do. He should be who we imitate. He is the one who we should look towards. He showed us to love and forgive instead of choosing to argue and condemn. We have an example to follow. The example of Jesus.

(Transition)

Seek peace.Jesus says in what we call the Beatitudes, Blessed are the peacemakers because they will be called sons and daughters of God.” A peacemaker desires to form peace no matter the circumstances.

A peacemakerwill look for what can unite people instead of focusing on what we disagree on. In Christian circles it can lead us back to the essentials. Can weagree on at least this? We believe that Jesus died in order to allow our sins to be forgiven. Let that unite us together.

In our communitieswe need to find ways that we can relate to each other. We should seek things that can unite us. We do this through conversations and listening to those around us. We should usually be able to agree on something.

If that isn’tthe case, then a peacemaker will walk away instead of allowing division to prevail. They may not be able to fix the situation, but they are not willing to make the situation worse. They will do all they can to create peace.

Our last point is to be people of joy. We are to allow the Holy Spirit to work within us in such a way that we have “joy, joy, joy down in our hearts.” We are to attempt to not allow the struggles and difficulties of the world to get in the way of the love and joy that we receive from being in a relationship with Jesus.

Who are you following? Who or what are you allowing to have a greater impact on your life? Who or what is leading to your responses that are positive or negative. These are not questions to ask one time. We should ask them over and over again.

We shouldallow our relationship with Jesus to lead us into becoming people of joy, love peace, and forgiveness. Let us become the people that God desires for us to be.

Let us pray…