Good morning! Welcome to Sunrise
Church! I am Tim Roberts, the pastor on staff here and I am so excited to be
here and worship our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, with you this morning. I
am excited because not only do I have this opportunity to worship a God I love
and who loves me, I get to do so with a group of people that I dearly love too
- you! So welcome and thank you for being here this morning.
You know, it's not just the fact that
we are here to worship together this morning that excites me, but also that I
have this opportunity to share with you the awesome mission, vision and values
that God has implanted into our collective hearts here at Sunrise. Ever since
we gathered last October to prayerfully listen to God's guidance for us as a
church, we have seen many wonderful things transpire and are continuing to see
many more unfold before our very eyes.
Last week, I first shared with you the
news that beginning September 15th, we will be launching a third worship
service, which will be held each Sunday afternoon and will be directed for
persons with special needs and their families. Since then, I have had numerous
comments about how excited and glad so many of you are as we are reaching out
to a segment of the population who need a time and place to worship the Lord.
This morning, we are continuing to look
at our Values, those non-negotiable principles that we hold dear and without,
Sunrise would not be who we are. The Value we will be considering today is
this, please read it along with me
Live Authentic Lives - We are the same people in
everything we do, all the time.
[Prayer]
Last
year, as we gathered for the God Into
Focus sessions, one of the words that kept coming up, time and time again,
was the word "authentic." So, I begin to do what I normally do and wonder,
"What does that word, authentic, mean?"
Here
is one of the definitions I found:
Authentic - not false or imitation: real, actual
I
find that to be pretty accurate as a description of Sunrise, don't you?
One
of the things that I immediately fell in love with about Sunrise is the level
of authenticity. I quickly found out, even before I actually started as your
pastor, that the people here are the same people in church on Sunday morning as
they are on at a restaurant on Wednesday afternoon, at the Soup Kitchen on
Saturday morning, or at a bar on Friday night. That I find refreshing, because
I have found there to be too many church people whose lives in the church are
not reflected in their daily lives.
So,
what we have here is a gathering of people who hold no pretenses or put-ons. We
are just genuine people seeking to live out a real faith in a real world.
Now,
I could stop here, but you know me - I like to preach and I am going to take
the time that I have been given. But even more so is that I don't believe that
is what God is intending when he placed this value of "just being the
same" in our hearts. There must be something holy about being authentic if
it is something that God is calling us to be.
Let's
take a look at an example that Jesus gave about holy authenticity. It can be
found in the Gospel of Luke 18.9-14.
Luke 18.9-14 (CEB)
9 Jesus told this parable to certain people who had
convinced themselves that they were righteous and who looked on everyone else
with disgust: 10 "Two people went up to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee and the
other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself with these words, ‘God, I
thank you that I'm not like everyone else—crooks, evildoers, adulterers—or even
like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of everything I receive.' 13 But the tax collector stood at a
distance. He wouldn't even lift his eyes to look toward heaven. Rather, he
struck his chest and said, ‘God, show mercy to me, a sinner.' 14 I tell you, this person went down
to his home justified rather than the Pharisee. All who lift themselves up will
be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted up."
Here
is a classic example of how so many people, who claim to be followers of God,
are really missing the point of following God. The Pharisee was a highly
religious man - he had to be in order to be a Pharisee in the first place. But
his position made him presumptuous. He presumed that his words and "better
character" was enough to win him "brownie points" with God. The
problem is he had just enough religion to be virtuous, but not enough to be
humble.
As we read this story, it was pretty
easy to grasp the point of it, wasn't it? Sometimes, it doesn't take much to
spot a phony.
I just love that phrase Mr. Haney, from Green Acres, uses, "Genuine
imitation." Let that phrase rattle around in you mind for a moment.
[Pause] In other words, he is peddling something that is "authentically
fake!"
Several years ago, I got one of the
worst tongue-lashes ever as a pastor, all because of a message I put on the
church road sign. It seems I had the audacity to put on the sign, right under
the name of the church, these words, "An Imperfect Church for Imperfect
People." Well, that did not sit very well with one of the matriarchs of
that church. I can still vividly recall her wagging her finger in my face as
she berated me for calling her and her church "imperfect." After a
few minutes of calling me names and insinuating that my parents weren't
married, she huffed off, feeling vindicated and justified. So, can you guess
what I did? I left the sign as it was; because I was pretty sure by then that
it was an accurate statement.
You see, to live an authentic life as a
follower of Jesus means that we must admit that we don't have it all together
and we don't have all the answers. It means that we must admit that we are
broken and flawed; that we've all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of
God.
Yet, it also means that a loving God -
one whose depth of grace far exceeds the breadth of our sins and wrongdoings,
created us each. It means that there is a God who loved each one of us enough to
die for us so that we would never have to endure the sting of eternal
separation from God.
That's
what we must admit to live authentic lives. You see friends, the world does not
need "genuine imitations" of followers of Jesus; the world needs the
real deal - authentic Christ followers.
Back
at the beginning of this message, I gave you one definition of the word,
authentic. As I was doing some research for this sermon, I came across another
definition; one that I believe aptly applies here:
Authentic - worthy of acceptance or belief as
conforming to or based on fact
Think
of it this way:
Life conforming to the Truth, the love
of Jesus Christ.
Back
in January, many of the men of the church decided to have their version of the
women's "Cookie Exchange." But, being real men living out real lives
in a real world, cookies just didn't seem to cut it, so they had a "Beer
Exchange."
There
was one thing that happened that made it so memorable for me. One of the guys
there came up to me and said this, "You know pastor, I like this "Come
as you are" attitude the church has, but I really hope I will not to stay
the same."
Yeah,
that's what it means to live authentic lives. We are all on this road of faith,
maybe at different points along it, but we are all on it striving to live into
being who God created us to be. That's what we, as United Methodists, refer to
as moving on toward perfection.
As
we travel along this road, maybe it would be a good idea to take to heart some
of the words that the Apostle Paul said to some Roman pilgrims along this same
road. He said this:
Romans 12.2 (CEB)
Don't be
conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of
your minds so that you can figure out what God's will is—what is good and
pleasing and mature.
So
you see friends, to live authentic lives means we don't have to carry the all
the weight of the extra baggage from trying to pretend to be something we're
not. It simply means to live fully into who we are while striving to become all
our gracious God desires us to be.
Let
all of God's authentic people here at Sunrise United Methodist Church
say...Amen.
[Prayer]
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