I want to talk to you in a little different way today, and do so because of the nature of the theme that we have been carrying all of this month.  The Gospel of John, Chapter 15, Verse 15 when Jacob says, “I have called you friends.”  Previous to that he says, “You are not servants or slaves, you are my friend.  I am your friend,” Jesus declared.  When friends get together, if they are truly friends, there might be moments of deep honesty, deep awareness that you can say to a friend honest things about what you feel or maybe about your friend.   

            So it is in that spirit that I want to present to you what courage means.  Pastor Nancy shared with you about the attitude of gratitude two weeks ago and what it means to be a compassionate friend last week, and now for the courageous friend.  Courageous friend, or the word courage itself, is a marked word.  It can mean many things to many people.  And what I want to do today is talk to you as one friend to another because sometimes the robe gets in the way.  The robe is a sign of the priestlyness of our calling.  Pastors, prophets, and priests—that’s what we are called to be.  And this week as I was preparing for this message, I wanted to choose some images that I thought might help reflect what courage might mean or could mean.  In fact, in a moment, after I give you a definition of courage, I’ll share some of those images because the definition of courage itself is from your perspective.  When you hear the word courage, what comes to your mind?  It will be a possibility of someone like this.  Anytime you think of firefighters in California or 9/11 or wherever it may be, courage is a part of that image.  Police, also; soldiers—people who are in the line of duty to protect others step out in courage risking themselves.  That’s part of what courage means.  The definition I found for courage is hard to define but it is also hard to demonstrate so most of the time we can point to a person or an action and say that is what courage is.   

            Courage in the dictionary is defined as “mental or a mind and moral strength for our hearts.  And it’s the courage to venture forth, to persevere, to withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.  So we see an image like this and we think of the fact that, from the Wizard of Oz, this is the courageous lion who believed he needed to have something pinned on the outside that would give him the courage.  He didn’t believe it was on the inside.  But if you can wear a label, that could make him courageous—or a medal in this case.  Another image is one back in Tiananmen Square because of a student who stood before tanks courageously.  Foolishly—yes!  Did he win?  No, but he stood up as did others.  As did monks, recently, in Myanmar.  That’s what we think of when we hear and see the word courage. 

            Or humorously, as when you are up against the odds.  Now the question essentially is, “Who is the courageous one?  The cat or the dogs that they restrain themselves?  They may be police dogs; we don’t know.  The picture didn’t say.  But sometimes that’s what we feel like.  Courage is when you are out there by ourselves.  But in truth, we need to think of this statement.  You may not be able to read it clearly.  I’ll read it for you because it is the heart of what courage is for a Christian.  “It takes a lot of courage to put our lives in God’s hands.  To give ourselves completely—our dreams, our hopes, our plans--to follow where He leads and make His will our own.  But all it takes is foolishness to go the way alone.” But back then people were asked to be, as Christians, courageous, to stand up for Christ!  Some of us have more of this kind of an attitude and look.  What me?  Who me? How can I be courageous for Christ?  How can I stand out?  I know I can’t, like the quote I just gave you, do it by myself. 

            So most of the time it is good for us to think about doing it together—being courageous, that is.  Like these three people—is it a courageous thing to work in a food pantry?  Well, it helps if you know you are going to have a friend there.  It helps to step out and go forward when you know you don’t do it by yourself.  And it is also with the faith that courageous action that you are being called to, to do so not with that fearful of the previous but with more of a “look at this”, a sense of joy and contentment.  You are not alone when you face it that way. 

            From our very beginning at our birth, we are called forth out of our lives to see the world differently. To, as this child is coming out of a blanket, being courageous as a Christian is like having that which we have been hiding under taken away from us and we come out and face the world.  It’s courageous for parents to stand up. We think it’s a given thing but it is courageous for a parent stand up and have their child baptized, as Anna Lee, our newest, well after last night, Grace was baptized.  Parents have to stand forth and pledge to commit and that takes more courage than we many times give them credit for.  Or it can be a person who stood long and faithfully who also represents (now I didn’t ask her permission so I’ll probably owe Beulah something) but the person who has been out from underneath that blanket for a long time and has been courageous to stand not alone, but with her Lord. 

            These are just a few images that I wanted to share with you because that’s what I need to get to next and this is where I need to sit down as a friend because it is going to be talking about something that you don’t want me to talk about.  It’s about giving—the courage to give.  As it turns out, God has sort of a humorous way of helping me prepare for a sermon because I got a call, I think it was Monday, from Bill Lindstead, who is part of the Thursday morning Bible study group that meets at Aunt Judy’s.  Welcome to everyone; you are welcome to show up if you want to be there at 6:30 a.m. in the morning.  That can be a challenge for some of you.  As it turned out I said, “Well, what’s the Bible study on?” because Bill Murphy leads that and they are gone for a couple of weeks.  And I was told it was Hebrews, Chapter 7.  “Ok, I can do that”.  Well that was before I read it.   

And I want to pick up with you and show you three different Scripture and how we build a case, if you will, for the courage to give.  And it starts in Genesis 14, actually, not Hebrews 7.  Hebrews 7 quotes Genesis 14 and that’s where we must begin.  It was the time of Abraham.  Abraham is called the Father of our faith.  Faith, actually, the Muslim, the Jewish, the Christian all go back to Abraham.  It is Abraham who stepped out in courage and faith to go where God was calling him.  Where, he did not know but he did so in faith.  And it picks up in Chapter 14, Verse 18 when it says, “Then Melchizedek, King of Salem,…”  (and we’ll talk more about Melchizedek in a minute, “…brought out bread and wine.”  (Sort of a precursor to communion)  “He was priest of God most high and he blessed Abram saying, ‘Blessed be Abram by God most high, creator of heaven and earth, and bless be God most high who delivered your enemies into your hand.’  Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.”  That’s the mysterious part of all of this.  It’s the Old Testament.  Some people say, “Well, that’s exactly what it is because the Old Testament is where old people live.”   That’s why I don’t ever want to say they were all old back then.  Methuselah and people like that.  And that’s true.  It is old times; it’s ancient history thousands of years ago.  But the writer of Hebrews, that’s the one who has taken that passage in the seventh chapter of Hebrews and tries to explain it more fully and tells us in the opening part of the seventh chapter that Melchizedek is more than just a high priest, he has no mother or father, he has no coming or going, no being born or dying.  He is one who will live forever because he never has to die.  And that makes it a very mysterious person for that early stage.  But God works in mysterious ways.  So we call it a messenger possibly, an angel you might, but the writer says you have to understand that this is the Melchizedek who, by the way is defined as the King of Righteousness and the King of Salem.  That’s what his name means—the King of Peace. And he’s the order of high priest; the one who brings the gift of what we call communion—the bread and the wine.  And Abram’s full and complete response is to give him a tenth of everything that he has.  That’s the basis of tithe.  That’s where it comes from, originates.  And the writer of Hebrews, who we really don’t know who it is, uses this very point to say, “If you think he was the high priest, you ought to see Jesus!  Now that’s the true high priest!”   

And that’s the basis upon which our Scripture for the day is because Jesus is the perfection of the high priest.  And it is in the order of Melchizedek that it says in Verse 17 of the seventh chapter of Hebrews, “For it is declared you are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.  The former regulation… That’s the law that came after Melchizedek that became institutionalized, that said later, when the twelve tribes of Israel were formed and the Levites were given the high priesthood order, at that time it was those people who then were given the law to enforce.  It said, “And a tenth will come from every one.”  Abram didn’t have that.  He just simply responded in gratitude, “Here’s a tenth”.   

But then the Levites had to institutionalize it and that was a former regulation.  “And it was weak,” the writer of Hebrews says, “and useless for the law made nothing perfect.   And a better hope was introduced by which we draw near to God.”  And that’s a reference to Jesus.  “It is not without an oath, though.  Others became priests without any oath.  They were born into it. That’s what the Levites were.  But he became a priest with an oath and God said to him (God said to Jesus), ‘The Lord is sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever.’  Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.”  And that’s the whole purpose of the writer in that chapter.  Is to say, “It is not the law by which you should respond, it’s by the spirit of God that is within you and a new covenant that is complete in Jesus Christ whereby we are drawn into generosity in a courageous way not because the outside law says we should, but because the heart draws us into that. 

The attitude of gratitude is a mental start. The compassion is the response of the heart.  And the courageous response to the mind and the heart together is to do something—to take action, to step forward in what might be a scary way and understanding of this meaning.  For it is declared, it says, that Jesus is a high priest and we are to respond in a way to that high priest as Abram responded to Melchizedek.  And then we say, “Well, yes, we’re not under law, we’re under grace.”  We could be under law.  We are, in fact, if you think about the United States Government.  Anybody here cheat on your taxes?  You don’t want to admit it, do you?  You all pay it as you should, don’t you?  And why do you?  Well, I’ll give you credit.  Some of you probably do so because you know it is the right thing to do.  But I’ll bet you some of you know, you don’t want to be audited and you’d rather do it right the first time then be caught later, right?  Well, what’s the motivation behind that?  It’s that somebody’s going to catch you and so you do right because you don’t want to be caught.  That’s exactly the law that Jesus comes to replace.  It’s a better covenant.  And it says we respond in action out of the compassion of our hearts and the attitude of our minds to make a difference, to make a change, to stand up with strength.   

And it references back to what is found in Mathew 22 where Jesus, one of the many times, is challenged and given one of those “trick” questions.  And as He does so in Mathew 22, He’s going to respond and the setting is that the question was, “Are you going to pay taxes to Caesar?”  Today, are you going to pay taxes to the United States government?  The point being is that back then it was seen as an evil government.  You may not always like what our government does, I don’t.  But I pay my taxes because I don’t want to get caught.  But Jesus knows it’s a trick question, sort of one way or another it would be wrong.  So His response, as we find in Mathew 22:17 starting with verse 18, “Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, ‘You hypocrites!  Why are you trying to trap me?  Show me the coin used for paying the tax.’  They brought him a denarius and he asked them, ‘Whose portrait is this and whose inscription?’  ‘Caesar’s’, they replied.  Then he said to them, ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” 

Is it that simple?  Yes, it is because Helen Keller said, “Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness.  It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”  And the worthy purpose is to accept what God calls us to do and to be.  And to be means action.  And that means we respond, not because God is ready to punish us if we don’t tithe, although that’s preached by some pastors.  It’s called the “Prosperity Gospel”.  God will get you if you don’t give to the church.  But if you do, well the gates of heaven will be open and you are just going to get all kinds of good things.  Now, what’s the motivation there?  To win the lottery and not to lose out!  Abram didn’t ask any question.  What am I going to gain by giving a tenth?  Or what will happen if I don’t?  He responds.  And it is on that order of Melchizedek that we respond to the high priest who is Jesus, the Christ. 

You know, things do cost to be courageous.  To be a firefighter or soldier or anyone else in that line of duty, to stand up and do what is right is not always perceived as a comfortable thing to do in this world.  We know that to be true.  Maybe some of you have tried in that way.  There is a story about a rich father down in Texas that could be anybody.  Well, what happened was, the son, maybe because he was rich, maybe not, whatever the son chose wrong.  He chose so wrongly that he committed murder.  Officially, everyone believed it.  The father was pretty rich and he hired the best lawyers.  Now we should always try to get the best no matter the circumstance.  I believe that.  That’s desire as a father for a son.  As it turned out, the son was acquitted.  So legally now he is not guilty of that.  And the lawyer came to him and he had quite a bill.  It was a long and lengthy trial.  And the father responded, “If you charged me twice as much, I would have been glad to pay it to keep my son from going to jail.”  Sounds like an honorable thing.  Well, it was about a year later that the son finally decided in some form or fashion, maybe because of helpful people around who continued to guide him, he started to go to church.  And by going to church he did hear the message, not just with his head but with his heart.  And he accepted, under the preaching of one pastor, accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.  And let that life that had been so sinful and painful, behind.  Now, the pastor was a little more bold than I would be, but he went to the father and he said, “You know, your son has become a Christian.  I think in joy and celebration it would be wonderful to make a contribution to the church.”  I wouldn’t do that, but he did.  The father said, “Good, here’s ten dollars.”  And the pastor said, “Is that all that your son’s salvation is worth?”   

And that’s the bottom line.  How much is our salvation worth?  Is it because we believe that we have all ten of these apples under our control and it’s ours to use the way we want?  Or maybe when I die then somebody else can decide what to do with it?  Okay, you can look at the world that way.  But I simply am saying that this church, Grace United Methodist Church, is in our hands.  Individually, like that cat with the dog, we can’t do it by ourselves.  No one of us can carry the load of what this church is called by God to be doing as it is already doing.  But it is we together, each in our own setting where we respond.  And, yes, the tithe is not the hoped for, it’s the foundation.  That’s what we say.  We receive God’s tithes and our offering.”  Tithes first and offering later.  But Abram went ahead and made other offerings.  In sacrifice and other ways when he made his own son potentially.  But that’s where it comes from.  From friend to friend.  That’s the way the truth is. 

But I’m not a Levite of that priestly society.  I don’t apply the law.  I simply tell you, and I believe God wants me to tell you, is the truth as well as I need to hear it too.  So today we are receiving our first round of commitment cards and there are extra ones in the bulletin if you forgot yours.  But if you need to take time to pray about this, this is not a hurry up experience.  Today we receive those which we will receive.  We’re going to consecrate them; offer them to God in the honesty and clarity that they represent your understanding with God, not to be charged or judged or measured by anybody else, between you and God.  But together we are God’s people.  And it is together that we will build a ministry for Grace United Methodist Church in 2008.  We can’t spend what we don’t receive and we stay within our budget.  The budget meaning that which we receive.  We don’t spend more than that, but we do need what you are called to give.  Because with your continued help, it doesn’t stop with the offering or your prayerful support of the ministries of Grace United Methodist Church, you will make the difference.  It’s up to you, it’s up to me, it is up to us. 

I ask for the ushers to come forward now.  We’re going to pass the offering plate like we normally do.  And ask that if you have brought your commitment sheet and you are ready to do so today, to please place it in that offering. And Roger is going to share some music and we’ll actually look at some pictures that are sort of a representative of our congregation.  Let’s be in a prayerful attitude.

E-mail Comments to: Pastor Bob Coleman

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