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“Do Gooder Too” Second in Series on Wesley’s Rules Scripture Lesson: 3 John 3:11 & Acts 10:38 Sermon Transcript for November 16, 2008 By Pastor Bob Coleman
Last night Pastor Jenothy Rather, our new pastor on staff who is working with Children’s Ministry, shared the message because Pastor Andy and I and Peggy and Joyce were at a Marriage Enrichment gathering yesterday, a retreat down at Brown County. A very good experience, very lovely. But we were neither one here to preach so we said to Jenothy, “How would you like be the pastor?” She said, “Of Course”. And that’s why we titled hers, if you’ll look at the 5:30 p.m. service, “Do Gooder”. And mine is “Do Gooder Too”. The worse grammar you can come up with but you’ll remember the point better that way. Let’s have a prayer. “Gracious God, simply open our minds and our hearts to hear your Word this morning. In Christ name, Amen.” Now, do gooder has a bad connotation. I never liked it when that was labeled because I was part of a church growing up and they’d say, “Oh, you’re just a do gooder.” I finally have understood why that’s usually labeled. It’s partly out of jealousy because they see somebody else doing some good. But it also has a side strain which we need to be careful. The carefulness comes with do gooder when it is good to me do good. I’ll strut my stuff and show you how good a Christian I am. If I don’t say it personally myself I’ll at least get a PR person who will tell the good news about what I am doing. That’s a do gooder part that is not very helpful. It draws attention to ourselves. What Jesus asks for us to do, do good out of the spirit of the wellness of our soul. James said, “Be not just hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word.” It’s an action word. Its one thing to hear what God tells us to do, it’s another to follow the instructions that God gives us. In the Book of Acts, which is a history of the early church where Luke puts down the events from the time of Jesus’ ascension into Heaven to the very early days of the church. In Acts, Chapter 10:37-38, Luke says, “You know what has happened through Judea beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached. Our God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the holy spirit and power and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil because God was with him.” Hear those two phrases. “He went around doing good” and “because God was with him”. Those are two important elements to our understanding of the second step in the three rules of do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God. Now, Christians are expected to do good, correct? And when we don’t, people usually are disappointed as well they should be. Because we represent the best one of all creation--the one of God coming in human form to show us how to live the good life. Not just live the good life in the cultural sense of have what we want when we want it, but to live the good life in doing good. But is it only Christians who do good? Listen to this, it’s kind of eye-opening. The writer of the Letter of John, not the Gospel, but there are three small letters toward the end of the New Testament. This one is actually only one chapter long and about fourteen versus. In the third letter of the Letter of John, the 11th verse, he said, “Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.” Listen to that! If you see someone doing good or the results of their actions, where does it come from? It comes from God. It is associated with God’s purpose and direction for all of creation. Never discount the good action done by anyone whether they have an awareness of God in their life or not or maybe some aberration of what we believe God to be. If the good happens, it is of God. It is on the same end to say that love is God. Whenever we see love lived out, God is present. Now the tricky part of that, of course, is “what is good?” Measuring that in that way can be a challenge. But one thing we do need to know is that St. Augustine gave us an indication of that when he said, “You owe your conscience to God, but to one another you owe nothing but mutual love.” So love and goodness go together hand in hand. You really need to love people to do good. And to do good there is some aspect of love to it. Yes, it may be back up to the do gooder piece where someone is trying to gain favor for themselves or gain a claim for themselves. And that might be true, but the end result, if it is good, it is still of God. Keep that in mind. To do good, it says in our Discipline, our Book of Order that we follow, “By doing good, by being in every kind, merciful way after their power as they have an opportunity, this is what Methodist are to do: Doing good of every possible sort as far as possible is foundational to understanding that we not only are to do good, but we are to do good at all times and in all places.” In fact, John Wesley put together a litany. It becomes one that really says that there is no escape clause. There really is not a moment in life, or place, or location or an opportunity that is without the opportunity to be able to do good. When John Wesley said that we are “To do all the good you can, by all the means that you can, in all the ways that you can, in all the times that you can, in all the places that you can, to all the people that you can, as long as you ever can.” Now that pretty well covers everything. As long as you have breath, you are to be doing good no matter what circumstance you find yourself in, maybe even positive, do good in the midst of that. Now Jesus gave us some further declaration. Of course it was there before John Wesley penned those words. And when He said, “As you do it to the least of these”—meaning anyone, all the way from the bottom rung of society to the top. But “If you do it to the least of these, you have done it to me.” And they said, what did we do when we did that? And He said, “Well, you fed the hungry, you gave clothing to those who were naked, you visited those who were sick, you went to those who were in prison, you shared with others, you reached out to the poor, and that’s just the beginning of the list of the bridges that you can cross to do good. Having Sandra here today is very helpful to see that we have a living example of building a bridge between ourselves and the school literally in our back yard or back door. This Good Samaritan Fund that we talked about, even though we did have an infusion of some monies, we have much more than $500 each week of people asking a request if we met them all. And we can’t. Now we do try to go through a process of kind of checking because we know that as 1) you can always have an opportunity to do good, but there are sometimes people who might take advantage of you. So we have them fill out a little paperwork and such. But honestly, the numbers are increasing and we are finding more and more of people who are already members of this church who are having a need. I had one express to me this week that the basic bills are $3800 behind. And they don’t know where they are going to get their next house payment. And that’s not somebody that came in through the door—they are already here. There are going to be more and more of those needs. And that person is seeking to find a job any way that they can. They are out there looking and they are just not there at the moment. The food pantry is another bridge of doing good in this community. The Donation Center that we have spoken of in relation to the flood relief, the clothing drive, the Angel Tree when United Way will use our facilities to help people who need to have toys for children for their families for this Christmas. These are just one of many, many ways and the demands are going to get greater. The opportunities to do good, therefore, are increasing. We need to look at it in that way more than the other way. The down-in-the-mouth “Oh things are terrible! The economy is going down the tubes and all that”. And it is in rough shape, there’s no question. But what we look at on the other side is, we say to God, “This is our opportunity God to be your church. This is our opportunity to be your people. To stand up and do what you call us to do. To do what is good.” Back when I quoted from the Third Letter of John when I said, “Anytime that you see good done, it is from God”, goes back to the very opening Words of creation that we find in Scripture when God created all the things that were around, the trees and the birds, and finally to the people. And what was the response after each day of creation? He looked around and saw that it was good for the purpose of glorifying God. Yes, but also later as God helped the hearts of people to open up to learn that they are called to take care of one another in mutual love. Not just the one another of those who are in this fellowship but the one another of all people everywhere. God basically puts in our hearts the opportunity and the desire to do good. Now children can be raised in an atmosphere where they learn the opposite. And it can take a lifetime or maybe never to undo that. But most children are raised with the idea of trying to help beyond themselves. And you can see this lived out even when, for the right reason maybe, yes, we have the military. And the military trains people very well, yes. But what is the very reason that they train them? That in case of conflict they are trained to be, either on front line or to help, to kill the enemy. That’s what you train a good soldier to do, in that circumstance, to defend the camp by killing someone else. And you think, “We create killing machines”. But almost inevitably, and there are exceptions, inevitably those same soldiers trained to do that will then turn around whenever they get an opportunity to do good, to help a child or a family, even in a war zone, to rush to the aid of a civilian that is hurt, to provide meals, to do whatever they can do because God created them first and foremost to be good. To reach out and meet the needs of others even when a government trains, for the purpose of defense, people to do the opposite of what we think is good, to kill. The heart’s desire is to do right, to do good. That’s why I think the John passage is very appropriate. And we need to recognize that. And not to discount because someone is not of the Christian faith when they are doing good. Rather we need to cheer them on and help them to understand. But a word of warning here--Doing good is not just a clean process. It’s messy to do the work of Jesus Christ. It’s messy because people don’t always respond the way you want them to. Remember I mentioned earlier, not everyone comes with a pure heart to ask for help? There are people who are using the “system” as we say, and it’s not always easy to find that out. We try to when possible. But the other is, if you look at what Jesus did when helping people, it wasn’t always successful in the way we might see it. Let’s look at it from this angle. There are those people who may not change their ways. They’ve gotten themselves in to such a pickle, we would try to help them to get out of that pickle, but they don’t want to get out of that pickle, they just want to keep on in that pickle, or a mess, or whatever term you want to use. And then there are those who you have given them a bailout and they come back in because there is another bailout. You can draw your national parallels if you want. They may not even be thankful people. Sometimes they come in, they are embarrassed so they are really angry at themselves and angry at their circumstance and the least little irritation they get from you, they will be angry with you. That’s tough for people who help to understand that. But also take the story of Jesus when he healed the ten lepers. How many of those came back to say “thank you”? One! That’s not a very good betting average is it? Well, if Jesus can’t even get more than one to come back and say “thank you” to Him, we’re going to have people who we help who may not ever say thank you. Maybe they don’t know how to; maybe they are embarrassed to. I don’t know. But that’s not the call for us to do. It’s the call for us to do all the good we can with all the people we can and all the circumstances we can. It’s tough not to judge, but what it really means is when Reuben Jobes’ little book about the three rules. He says you have to learn not to be in control. You need to be frugal, good stewards, but not to be in control ultimately. But if you feel led to help, you give the help and then you let it go. You don’t try to come back and say, “Did they do right with what I gave them?” That’s not really our answer or our issue. Reuben Jobes says, “Part of serving God purely in the name of Jesus Christ is learning to let go.” We might find out next month that we too are in need. Who knows? And it is important for us to take care of “our own” as we say. But we must, as the church, take care of those who are not even of “our own”. But how far does that go? Now I’ll bring the most troubling passage for most of us, and it is for me, on a regular basis is to read this one and believe that Jesus intends it perfectly as He says it. In Luke, Chapter 6, if we are going to be in the do gooding activities of ministry, Jesus says, “But I tell you who hear me, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you. And if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.” Tough! Hard to understand! We would think there should be limits. I’m not necessarily saying that God says, “Give everything that you’ve got away then go in to the destitute life because of that”. Not at all! We are to be stewards of what we have. We are to help it to multiply. Because John Wesley also said, “Earn all you can, save all you can, and give away all you can even to your enemies.” If you struggle with that, it’s okay. Keep struggling with it. I didn’t make it up; I just read it as it is there. But it does underline the foundation of what we are to do in the limitations or lack of limitations of doing good. Who know by what action of doing good to someone who is our enemy, may well turn them around to become a friend. You might see that sometime. Not every time. To be honest, we all do struggle with that. But let’s go back to a foundational piece that almost every one of you have stood before the church somewhere, this one or another, and said your baptismal vows. You hear them from time to time; you just heard them a week or so ago. I want to go through those again because they support these three basic rules, particularly the first two. Do you remember what they were said? They were based in a covenant where God says to us we are to accept what God has offered to us through Jesus Christ, through our baptism, for the forgiveness of our sins but not just the forgiveness because we said it in this way. The questions were asked. “Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?” And the second one, “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil or injustice, oppression, in whatever forms they present themselves? That’s the “do no harm” clause of our baptism. And then comes the number three question, “Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in His grace (that’s letting go of control), and promise to serve Him as your Lord? That’s the “do good” statement. Service in the name of Jesus Christ is doing good. Two no harms and one do good. But our baptism vows don’t end there because for us to try and do that on our own would lead us to frustration, disappointment, and probably eventually rejection and going back to some old way. Because we finish our baptism vows by the truth of what it means to be here this morning. In union with the church, which Christ has opened to all people of all ages and nations, we pledge to be together in this doing good. That’s what pulls it all together. God does not baptize us by the spirit for us to be solo Christians. We need the strength of each other. And believe me, in the next few months, maybe years, we are going to be called upon to do many good things in very trying ways and difficult ways. But we will do it together. I’ve already had a couple of people come to me and said privately that if this continues on, meaning this decline in the value of stocks in particular, if it continues on as much as they have already experienced in the last two to three months, they will be without any resources. Another person had to pull back from a pledge that they made to this church. They said, “I just don’t have what I was going to give. It’s gone.” So in tears, they were embarrassed to have to say that in private. But then, at the same point, fetching the depth and maturity of his own faith, he said “But at least we’ll be in this together. As a community we’ll be in it together.” And that’s the strength of our baptism. To do good in the name of Jesus Christ is that we do good together with God’s help and strength guiding us in our ways. So, yes, we turn away from harm but we stop the car going in that direction and now we back up and we go in a new direction to do good. I read a book called, Passionate Worship, or parts of it, and it’s by Calistad. And he gives a story, an illustration which I want to share with you which goes back to that Third Letter of John that wherever we see good, we know that God is there. This gentleman was kind of curious about connecting with people so he wanted to try something. He put an ad in a local newspaper and this is all that he said: Join me by sending a passport size photo to … And then he gave his address. He just wanted to see what might happen. He got one response. A person sent his photo and that’s all that was requested. He said, just please join me and send me your photo. He didn’t say why, what other reason or purpose. He thought, well, that’s interesting. So let me try it further. And he opened a web site. And he put the same request on the web site. This will tell you how much the web sites out there versus the newspaper because he got 101 responses to the same request. Think of that! Simply come join me, send your photo. Nothing else explained. And he got 101 people. What does that tell you? What it tells me—people need to be a part of something else. They desire, they thirst after being a part of something, and I would say, greater then themselves. But it wasn’t long, before those same 100 or some of them started to respond back. They said, “Well now that we’ve joined, what are we going to do?” What did I tell you? God makes us to be doers, doers of good things. It’s a natural desire when we know our hearts and it hasn’t been clouded over by circumstances or all kinds of others reasons why we have shut the door on that. And so finally he relented, sort of, and said “Okay, here’s what we will do as our club. We’ll call it the ‘Karma Army’. (I don’t know why he called it that.) Every Friday we will all do something good for somebody. It may be calling on a person who is sick. It may be stopping by with some one in a ditch who looks lonely and try to be their friend. It may be taking someone out to lunch. You look around”, he said, “and look on a Friday and find somebody to do good for them. That’s our reason for being.” Does that sound like the church? Without, of course, awareness of God or the love or grace of Jesus Christ, but it’s the outward sign of the inward and visible grace of what we are talking about. We are needed to do good. So Karma’s Army has grown and there are more who are joining. And how simple it is and how simple we forget to do that. One of the things we need to do is do good ourselves and encourage one another. But we need to go out and invite others to come and be a part of this. Because it’s the best thing going ever, it’s God’s purpose for who we are. And it not only gives us something to do, but it makes us a part of something greater than ourselves and much more long lasting than Karma’s Army. So here is what I want you to do for this morning. There’s a piece of paper in front of you. It can be a yellow card, if you want, or one of the offering envelopes. I don’t care which one. But everybody grab a piece of paper and grab a pen or pencil if there is one in the slot or if you’ve got it with yourself. Because I am going to read again the words that I shared with you earlier, what I call the Wesley Litany. And here’s what I want you to do because here is the other piece that is different from Karma’s Army, is that God is ready to help you find somebody who needs some good done to them and for them. I believe they are already there. God needs to open your heart. You need to open it to God’s leaning and here is how we will do that. I’m going to read these words and I want you to, if the person’s face or name comes to your mind and to your heart, write that name down. And then make a pledge between you and God to do something good for them this week. As Sandra said, it may be praying for them. It can be doing some other action. It could be helping with Web School. I, it’s not for me to determine or to judge. But I believe God is saying, “I’m waiting. Ask me and I’ll lead you and I’ll show you the way of people who need to have some good done to them in my name, in the name of my Son.” So as I read these words again, let it be a time of prayer. And maybe a person’s name has already come to you and you’ve written it down, wonderful. But hopefully through this you will be able to hear God speak to you and live out the second law of these three principles to do good. Here are His words again. “Do all the good that you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, and all the times you can, in all the placed you can, to all the people that you can, as long as you ever can.” Let us pray, “Open our hearts, open our minds, let us do good in your name. Led by your Spirit to touch another life in whatever way, and however we may, with whatever we have, with our very being, to be your people in this time and this place. Amen.” E-mail Comments to: Pastor Bob Coleman
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