Practicing the Path of Jesus

Hi, friends, and welcome to the weekly Dulin podcast, a brief weekly reflection from Dulin United Methodist Church in Falls Church. Here, we take time to think together about faith, community, and what it means to live as disciples of Jesus in today's world.

Hello, Dulin Church. It's me, James Henry, your pastor. And we're here for another moment during the week, whether you're watching this on Doolin Week, on one of our visual streams or you're listening to this on the podcast, welcome to you. Have been sort of the arc of our time together in these moments and in the podcast has been one of talking about some of the basic truths of our United Methodist Wesleyan grounded faith. We've talked about everything from the general rules to the membership vows that we make.

We walked our way through the advent themes. And then we have just finished talking about last week the four points of the Wesleyan quadrilateral, which as you'll remember, Wesley never directly articulated but was the evidence of it by scholars found it all there. What does all this mean for us if we are choosing to be a part of United Methodism or even if we're not? If you're watching this and you're not United Methodist, that's perfectly all right too listening to this. Here's what I would say.

What I learned from my Wesleyan faith is something that I learned directly from Jesus as well. And that item is if you look really closely at Jesus and you begin to ask the question, what was he asking of us? A lot of people would tell you it's about believing something about him as a person, as the son of God, those kinds of things that articulates a call to believe. I would like to posit for you that there may be a call to believe in what Jesus talked about. I'm not challenging that.

But I think even more core to who Jesus was and the things that he taught was that Jesus wanted for us to see the world differently and practice our faith to walk in Jesus' footsteps, be more like Jesus in the way that we lived. He asked each of the disciples, if you look for the models, every single one of them was invited to follow him. And I think the implication of that is to follow in his path, to observe the ways that Jesus behaved towards other people, toward the world itself, in relationship to the way Jesus talked to God, and to learn from that a way of practicing our own faith. I think that what we believe does matter, but it does not matter as much as how we practice that which we believe, that which we see Jesus doing. To me, a core principle, we've talked about this before, I've mentioned this before, Certainly Jesus said there are two great commandments.

The first of which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. He's copying that from the Shema, Deuteronomy. And then he quotes from Leviticus. One of the very few times, maybe the only time he quotes from Leviticus, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. What would it look like to truly love our neighbor?

And that's a question that our faith keeps asking us. We see the example of Jesus who stops by the side of the road and listens to people who we don't even know the name of. He stops and talks to them, and for the moment that he's there, he is truly present with them. And I think that practicing presence, being where we are, wherever that is, is part of what the faith is all about. Jesus seems to constantly let go of the things that are not helpful on his journey of faith.

He is self emptying. Paul described it in Philippians in the letter to the people of Philippi chapter two, when he said, have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, our Lord, who though he was God essentially emptied himself. He didn't grasp onto that. He was constantly empty himself. The gospels talk about taking up the cross.

These are all practices. These are all practices that involve loving the neighbor, engaging the neighbor, being kind to the neighbor, letting go of the things that are holding us back, not being blocked. If there's something in our lives that is a temptation to find ways to deal with those addictions, to let them go, to turn our lives over more and more to this path of Jesus. So many people when I'm asked exactly about my faith, what do I do? Before people find out I'm a pastor and then they make a lot of assumptions.

But when they ask what I do, when they ask about faith or what I I don't tell them I'm a Christian. If you do, it's fine. This is not a denigration. But for me, I say that I follow the path of Jesus. Because for me, Jesus laid out a path that involved going to where people were in need and responding to those needs with God's abundance, with love, with concern, meeting those people where they are, not asking them to come to me, but going to them.

Although lots of people did come to Jesus, Jesus made it his practice. If you read about that young man, he was going from place to place to place. He was always on the move. He rarely settled in one place. He went to where people were.

Now, there people that continued to follow after him? Absolutely. And many of them became his disciples. They saw what he did. They saw his practice, and it changed them.

The Gospel of John often uses the phrase, particularly in the first four chapters, come and see. Come and see who Jesus is, and then practice that in reality. Practice that. Encountering Jesus changes the way we act. It changes the way we see the world.

It changes our heart. It is when we talk about repenting, the word is really about having a radical change of mind, a transformational way of seeing the world, to fall in love with that which God loves, which is pretty much everything and everyone. And if we fell in love with them, we wouldn't treat them poorly. We wouldn't just put labels on one another so that we could discount one another based on our socioeconomic position or what our nationality is, what our religion is. All of those are just labels.

They're just labels. And Jesus wants us to practice a different kind of thing where we see that a person is a person is a person, all loved by God and who God wants us in turn to love as well. Faith for us as followers in the path of Jesus, but certainly John Wesley who wanted us to have a practical faith, not just a faith in name only. If we want to practice that faith, we have to ask ourselves the tough questions. How will I pray?

Will I pray like those Buddhist monks who took off from Texas, walked 2,300 miles across the country as a form of Buddhist prayer for peace. Now, I'm not saying that you should become a Buddhist and walk across the country. But what I am saying is for them, that was the practice that called them out. What is the practice? What is your gift of practice?

We have people at Doolin who teach English as a second language. And that practice is a way of fulfilling their sense of calling. There are people who show up month after month to participate in and help prepare for the Ministry of Hope, which reaches out to 300 of our, more than 300 of members of our community who come to receive a hot breakfast sandwich and some other staples, as well as a giant gift card. There are other people who show up faithfully to sing in the choir, to help lead worship, who show up to every one of the outreach kinds of works that we do both in the community or in Appalachia with Appalachia Service Project and Rebuilding Together. These are ways to engage our faith.

I'm not suggesting to you a kind of a thing that our early Protestant parents would have been very concerned about, which is like doing these works are going to earn anything for you. They are a way of responding to the love of God, which was already given to you freely. Whether you respond or not, the love is coming your way. But our response can be one of action, of engagement with the world. And I think that's what we're being called to do.

You look at the way Jesus engaged the world. He engaged it so actively that people in power found him untenable and killed him. No matter how you want to talk about the death of Jesus and resurrection, if you will, he was killed because people in power did not like what he stood for, did not like the way he was empowering the poorest of the poor. I've rarely stirred up that much challenge in my life, but I wonder if that's not our calling if we follow the path of Jesus. Not to stir things just to stir them, but to be sure that the love of God is unflinching in reaching a world in need.

Well, those are my thoughts this week. My friends, I'm so glad you could join me. I hope that if this has been meaningful to you, you'll share it with friends, encourage them to listen to either the dual and weekly podcast, the audio only version, of course, or to watch us online on Thursdays at noon, either on our Facebook page or YouTube page or on our website. You can watch in all those places. If you missed them, they're all on the YouTube channel archived for you to watch.

So glad you could be with me. I wish you all the best. I hope that you're staying warm in this snowy season in which we find ourselves and safe. Thanks for being you and keep on practicing your faith. Until the next time.