Called to Be Saints: A Call to Moral Difference or Gospel Power?

[00:14:14] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[00:14:14] Please stand on our lips. Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
[00:14:29] Let us pray. Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ

[00:14:54] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_04]
[00:14:54] our Lord. Amen. You may be seated. Please join me in our prayer of confession. Merciful God,

[00:19:24] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[00:19:24] we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart. We have failed to be an obedient church. We have not done your will. We have broken your law. We have rebelled against your love.
[00:19:41] We have not loved our neighbors, and we have not heard the cry of the needy. Forgive us, we pray.
[00:19:50] Free us for joyful obedience through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
[00:19:56] Hear the good news. Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. That proves God's love toward us. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. Glory to God. Amen.

[00:21:29] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:21:29] The scripture reading for today is from 1 Corinthians chapter 1, starting with the first verse. Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus,
[00:21:50] called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus
[00:22:03] Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you, because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge
[00:22:16] of every kind. Just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you, so that you're not lacking in any spiritual gifts as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:22:35] God is faithful, and by Him you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
[00:22:42] This is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks.

[00:22:47] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:22:47] Good morning. Thanks for being here and weathering the snowstorm that's out there today.
[00:23:03] So a question. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone?
[00:23:11] Not a text, not an email or a DM, but, you know, actually sat down and wrote a letter, or even typed a letter, folded the paper, put it in an envelope, addressed the envelope, stamped it, put it in the mailbox.
[00:23:31] I read some research this week, this past week, that was actually from 2021, so it's already five years old, and it said that less than a third of Americans have written a letter to anyone in the past 12 months. And 15% of Americans have never written a letter to anyone
[00:23:53] in their life, ever. And that research was from five years ago, so I'm sure it's even a higher percentage who haven't written one since then. Letter writing, I think it's fair to say, letter writing has become sort of a lost art. But it's a central way that human beings have
[00:24:14] always communicated pretty much with each other. And the majority of the books of the New Testament are letters. We call them epistles. Romans, 1 Corinthians that we just heard, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and there's more that go on and on. These are all
[00:24:33] letters written by someone to somebody else or to a group of people. Some of them were written by Paul, some written in the name of Paul, attributed to him and by other people as well. And they were
[00:24:49] written really not terribly different from the way that we write letters today. So as scholars have reminded us for a long time, when we read these books of the Bible, we're actually reading somebody else's mail. And Paul, along with the other letter writers in the Bible, they did
[00:25:10] believe. They did believe that they were divinely inspired as they were writing these letters. And so therefore, those letters, when they were delivered to their recipients, they believed would carry some authority because of who was writing them and what they were about.
[00:25:29] But there was no way that they could have known that we would still be reading these letters today that we would actually consider them you know canonized holy scripture think for a moment imagine if if you've written a letter or a text or an email or to somebody imagine if somebody
[00:25:51] read that in a thousand or two thousand years how would that make you feel i can tell you this it's been a few years ago now but my kids found a box of letters that i sent to lisa while we were
[00:26:07] dating yeah i heard somebody say whoa yeah lisa not dated i'm a couple years older than her i graduated from college before her so we had a long distance relationship for a couple of years
[00:26:23] and so i wrote letters to i couldn't call her long distance every day i couldn't afford that so i wrote letters to her and the kids found found these letters and they read them out loud
[00:26:35] in front of us. It was awful, cringeworthy, to be sure. The things that I said, nothing inappropriate, thankfully, but just, oh, the things that I said. Most scholars, when you're in love, you say some crazy things. Most scholars believe that Paul, the Apostle Paul, wrote more
[00:27:01] than two letters, probably four letters to the church at Corinth. The two surviving letters are what we know of today as 1st and 2nd Corinthians. And then over the following three to four hundred years, as people began to debate, church leaders began to debate which books would actually be
[00:27:19] considered Holy Scripture, 1st and 2nd Corinthians survived the debate, and they made it into the Bible. Not all Christians agree on which books go in the Bible. There are some traditions that have more books in their Bible than we do, but pretty much all Christians, Protestant, Catholic,
[00:27:37] orthodox we virtually all of us view first and second corinthians as holy scripture therefore what paul says to corinth we believe god is saying to us and paul starts his letter off with something that is really important it may not seem all that important it's just kind of
[00:28:01] a salutation as we do sometimes in our letters today so we may just sort of toss it aside it's not really all that important, but it is important. He writes this, he says, to the church of God in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.
[00:28:21] So from his very opening words, Paul is reminding his readers, he's challenging them who they are called to be. They're called to be saints. Now when Paul uses the word saint, he's not referring to the word probably in a lot of the the way that a lot of us would think of it
[00:28:40] today the greek word hagios means to be set apart or holy it means different and unlike now when we hear the word saint today i would imagine that most of us think it refers only to
[00:28:57] a certain type of kind of a super super human christian a church martyr or a church leader There's somebody who's done something extraordinary in the faith.
[00:29:08] And therefore, when you think of it that way, only a rare percentage of people are ever going to be called saints.
[00:29:15] Mary, the mother of Jesus, St. Mary.
[00:29:18] Or Francis of Assisi, St. Francis.
[00:29:21] Or great church leaders, you know, Augustine or Aquinas.
[00:29:24] Or even more recently, somebody like Mother Teresa.
[00:29:28] But that interpretation of saint, you know, that only applies to an elite group of people, that interpretation did not gain popularity for centuries after the Scriptures were written.
[00:29:42] So at their core, a saint is anyone who is different from the world, who is set apart from the world in their likeness of Christ.
[00:29:54] I have a suspicion that the reason we interpret the word saint the way that we do today is that if we think that it only applies to somebody who comes around every few hundred years or so, then we're not really expected to be one ourselves, are we? But Paul didn't mean
[00:30:20] it that way. And because he didn't, he didn't let Corinth off the hook. And God doesn't let us off the hook either. We, you and me, we are called to be saints, set apart, unlike the world.
[00:30:36] Not better than the world.
[00:30:39] In fact, please hear that.
[00:30:41] We're not better than the world.
[00:30:43] We get ourselves in trouble as the Christian church when we think that we're better.
[00:30:48] We look like hypocrites and fools when we do that.
[00:30:51] But we should see ourselves as different, as set apart, so that when the world looks at us, they are seeing something that is unlike themselves.
[00:31:03] They see a community, for instance, of people who were not governed by greed or by gaining more and more stuff.
[00:31:12] But instead, they see a people whose first priority is giving and sharing and helping.
[00:31:21] When the world looks at us, they shouldn't see people who are consumed by power over others, but a people who make justice and equity and humility our goal.
[00:31:36] They shouldn't see exclusion.
[00:31:39] They should see inclusion and welcome and unity.
[00:31:44] They shouldn't see violence when they look at the church.
[00:31:46] They should see peace.
[00:31:49] When the world looks at the church, we want them to get a glimpse of the kingdom of God.
[00:31:56] When they look at us, we want them to see Jesus.
[00:31:59] I actually had the opportunity yesterday with Lisa, my wife, to see some people who I think do that very well, people who are very unlike the world, and then as a result give us a glimpse of Jesus.
[00:32:18] And it's Buddhist monks.
[00:32:21] You may have been following the story of the Buddhist monks for the past few weeks.
[00:32:28] I was just introduced to them two or three weeks ago myself.
[00:32:32] It's a group of about 20 monks, Buddhist monks, who began their walk for peace, their peace walk, back in October.
[00:32:43] They started in Texas, and they have been making their way state after state, town after town, and they're on their way to Washington, D.C.
[00:32:55] They're going to cover a little over 2,300 miles, and the purpose of this peace walk is to promote peace and national unity and compassion.
[00:33:09] They were just in Charlotte this week.
[00:33:11] Some of you probably went and saw them.
[00:33:12] They were in Charlotte.
[00:33:13] Lisa and I drove up to Spencer, North Carolina yesterday and got to watch them.
[00:33:20] It's really been interesting.
[00:33:21] I've watched several videos, probably 100 videos on social media of these monks and the people's responses when they see them.
[00:33:32] People are lined up on the streets as they walk by, and thousands of them are gathering in some of the towns where they stop.
[00:33:40] And it was like this for us yesterday.
[00:33:41] We were on the street, and they walked right in front of us.
[00:33:44] And watching people's responses in these videos and yesterday, people are in tears, absolutely overcome with emotion when they watch the monks walk by.
[00:33:57] It's so emotional for a lot of people, I know, because our world and our country now especially is starving, just desperately in need of a good word, a word of peace and compassion and not chaos.
[00:34:19] And these monks represent that.
[00:34:21] They represent peace in its purest form.
[00:34:25] They're so different, so unlike anything in the world around us.
[00:34:31] And in the process, they're giving us a glimpse of God.
[00:34:36] Buddhist monks are showing people Jesus Christ, probably better than a lot of church-going Christians.
[00:34:46] And this is God's call on us, on all of us, to be set apart, to be different.
[00:34:53] So much so that when the world looks at us, when it looks at the church, we hope they will say things like, Look at how they love other people.
[00:35:05] Look at how they take care of people.
[00:35:06] who were hurting, who were hungry.
[00:35:12] Look at how they welcome the outcast and the stranger.
[00:35:17] Look at how they don't judge others.
[00:35:20] Look at how the rich and the poor and the black and the white and the gay and the straight and the old and the young, look at how they all come together.
[00:35:30] They come together and worship and they eat together and they serve together and accept one another.
[00:35:38] Look at how they work for justice.
[00:35:41] and for peace i'm convinced that that when the world looks at the church and they see that that they're going to think to themselves well this is what the whole world should look like but if the world looks at the church looks at christianity
[00:36:05] and it sees essentially the same thing they see everywhere else if they see greed and power hungry people selfishness violence hatred if that's what they see when they look at the church it's only natural that they would pay us no mind
[00:36:21] or that's no different that's not unlike what they see and live every day what's interesting about Corinth the church at Corinth is that they were not unlike the world at all in fact as soon as our scripture today is over the salutation
[00:36:43] that he sends to them. As soon as he finishes that salutation, Paul proceeds to call them out on all their horrible behavior and conduct. I mean, the bulk of the content of 1 Corinthians is Paul rebuking the church, sort of taking them to task for all their abuses, their divisiveness,
[00:37:06] their immorality, their vanity, their feelings of superiority, their disrespect for the poor, and lots of other things. So Corinth was far, far from being a saintly church, but Paul still called them to be. And he loved them. He loved them deeply. You can tell by what
[00:37:32] he wrote in the very opening lines. He says, I give thanks to my God always for you, even those unsaintly people. Perfection was not a prerequisite for Paul to love and to care for Corinth.
[00:37:47] one of my favorite prayers is one you may have heard me say before it's by ruth duck she wrote several years ago and the prayer goes like this thank you god that you judge us not by the
[00:37:59] perfection of our actions but by our readiness to live boldly in faith and that's a prayer that really applied to corinth but it applies just as much to us in christianity today we are not as
[00:38:16] saintly as we are called to be. Too often we're not set apart and we're not different from the world. But we can be. We can be. As the prayer says, in our readiness to live boldly in faith,
[00:38:35] we can be better. The world needs us to be better so that they have somewhere to look and to see what the kingdom of God is like.
[00:38:50] And when they do, I'm convinced they're going to want the whole world to look that way.
[00:38:57] Amen.

[00:38:58] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[00:38:58] Please stand.
[00:39:13] Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is one true church, apostolic and universal, whose holy faith let us now declare.
[00:39:22] We believe in God the Father, infinite in wisdom, power, and love, whose mercy is over all his works, and whose will is ever directed to his children's good.
[00:39:36] We believe in Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, the gift of the Father's unfailing grace, the ground of our hope, and the promise of our deliverance from sin and death.
[00:39:51] We believe in the Holy Spirit as the divine presence in our lives, whereby we are kept in perpetual remembrance of the truth of Christ and find strength and help in time of need.
[00:40:06] We believe that this faith should manifest itself in the service of love as set forth in the example of our blessed Lord to the end that the kingdom of God may come upon the earth.
[00:40:22] Amen.

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_04]
[00:40:22] Let's go together in prayer to God. Holy and loving God, we come to you this morning

[00:41:26] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[00:41:26] just as we are. Lord, we're grateful for this day that you have made. God, we're grateful that we get to meet with you here now. Lord, we come to you carrying what is heavy, holding what is light and bringing both our faith to you, God, and also our fatigue.
[00:41:54] We thank you, God, that you are not surprised by us and by all that we are. God, that you're not disappointed in us, but that you meet us with mercy, a mercy that goes before us
[00:42:13] even when we don't know how to ask for it and even when we don't know to ask for it.
[00:42:22] Lord, in your mercy.
[00:42:24] Amen.
[00:42:26] God of all creation, we lift up this world that you love, a world aching with violence and division and grief, a world longing for justice, for peace, for healing.
[00:42:42] God, be near to places of war and unrest.
[00:42:48] Strengthen us and all of those who work for your peace.
[00:42:54] God, and comfort those whose lives have been torn apart.
[00:42:59] Lord, in your mercy.
[00:43:03] God of compassion, we pray for those who are sick or recovering.
[00:43:09] God, for those who are anxiously awaiting an appointment, or for those who are anxiously awaiting results.
[00:43:18] God, for any who are overwhelmed by life right now.
[00:43:23] God, for those who are lonely, exhausted, or afraid.
[00:43:29] Lord, for any who feel unseen, unheard, misunderstood, or misrepresented.
[00:43:38] God, for all of those carrying silent burdens.
[00:43:42] God, for those whose faith feels fragile right now, God, empower us to be your hands and feet to those in need. And God, we also ask that you would draw near, Lord, in your mercy.
[00:44:04] Lord, we pray for families, for parents, grandparents, caregivers, siblings who are doing their best, for children finding their way, God, for relationships that are marked with joy and for those that are strained by pain. Bring patience where tempers are short, gentleness
[00:44:28] where words have wounded, and healing where trust has been broken. Lord, in your mercy.
[00:44:35] and Lord we pray for this congregation God please shape us into a people who know we belong in your love and that we belong to one another who love quicker than we judge and who make room for questions and doubt and growth help us
[00:44:59] to reflect your grace in the way we speak and serve and show up for one another. Lord, bless all missions and ministries. Lord, in your mercy. God, we know that you are here with us, and we know that you hear us when we pray. So Lord, as your children, we take this
[00:45:22] opportunity now to lift aloud to you those praises and those concerns we carry. Lord, we pray for.
[00:45:36] Lord, in your mercy, we trust that you are already at work before us, within us, and beyond us.
[00:45:46] And we pray all of this in the name of Jesus, who taught us to pray, saying, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
[00:45:56] Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
[00:46:01] Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
[00:46:12] And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
[00:46:17] For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
[00:46:23] Well, good morning and welcome to worship here at Davidson United Methodist Church.
[00:46:27] if this is your first time worshiping with us we'd like to extend a special welcome to you and let you know that we have a gift for you out in our gathering space but right now i'd
[00:46:37] like to invite mike spencer to come forward he's going to share with us about a mission we have

[00:46:43] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:46:43] called all in guatemala good morning i'm mike spencer and the executive director of all in guatemala i hope to spend a few minutes this morning telling you a little bit about our organization. Some of the some of you that know me well are probably sitting
[00:47:09] there making bets that I can't keep this under three minutes, but I know Meredith might have a stopwatch out so I better give it a try. We actually started as a program within DUMC 20 years ago. By 2018 we had grown to the size where it made
[00:47:29] sense for us to form our own 501c3 nonprofit. We still have great relationships and about 7% of our total revenue comes from the grant provided by DUMC. When we formed our new organization we had to come up with a new name.
[00:47:47] Because we had 12 different programs we felt the all-in was appropriate as a title. We have grown quite a bit each year and in 2025 our total revenue exceeded three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Our programs can be
[00:48:08] categorized into three groups wellness, economic development which includes education, and relations which we think is important to build a trust and the and the cooperation to deal with we did we deal with that we want to make
[00:48:27] decisions with the people they're not for them. I could I could have talked a lot of a lot of time today to take up more time than Jim did but I know you're all want to go home so I'll just tell you about two accomplishments that we've
[00:48:46] had recently most of our programs operate year-round but our medical dental and relations program benefit from our annual trip we have 38 volunteers already committed to join us in March of 2026 our community development program has two areas vented stoves and water filters that we have
[00:49:15] expanded into other communities last year we were able to install these products in 35 different communities bringing our life-to-date total up to a hundred and thirty-eight installations I know these numbers might not mean too
[00:49:32] much to you, but I think the fact that we can say that approximately 75,000 people are now able to drink clean water and to breathe non-toxic smoke. I think this says a lot about the efficiency that we operate under. We're proud to be able to say that because of a lot of
[00:49:55] volunteer labor, our administrative costs are less than three percent, whereas most non-profits run at a rate well over 50 percent. Thanks again for the support of many individuals and the church itself. And I hope I can come back in 20 more years and give you an update of how we're doing

[00:50:18] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[00:50:18] then. Who knows? Or make a difference collection for January benefits all in Guatemala. So please make sure you stop by and speak to Mike or anyone who is involved in that ministry so that you can
[00:50:40] be a part of it. Just a few more announcements for you. We have Charge Conference that's coming up on Wednesday, January 28th at 530. That's going to happen right here in the sanctuary.
[00:50:51] And administrative council members are voting members of the Charge Conference, but all are welcome to attend. One correction to the location of our Becoming Disciples class this Wednesday, it is in room 212-214 so if you're a part of that class on Wednesday please head to 212-214
[00:51:12] and I also wanted to note that in our fellowship hall we have a belong connect event that we'd to invite you to stop by and browse around we have so many wonderful ways to get plugged in
[00:51:25] and get involved and find community and grow in your faith together and the belong connect event is a wonderful place to learn more about the various opportunities that we have that maybe you didn't know we had. And if you're sitting there and you're like, I have an idea for a way
[00:51:41] that people can connect, we have a piece of paper out there dedicated to your idea. So we would love for you to take the time to stop by and share with us whatever it is that you could imagine here at
[00:51:53] DUMC. I shared at the eight o'clock service that this Wednesday I was in my office and it just happened to be at that time that I was the clergy person on the hallway, just right at that moment,
[00:52:07] and a young woman walks in off the street and needs to speak to a pastor. And so she was brought down. I brought her down to my office, and we went inside, and I had a conversation with her,
[00:52:21] and I said, you know, what is it that made you just decide to walk in here and ask for a pastor?
[00:52:30] you know she wasn't asking for assistance financially she had food she had every material thing you know you could need but she was so distraught and I said you know what made you choose to walk into here and and she said I was just looking for goodness we all have a calling
[00:52:51] to continue to be a place of goodness a place that reveals Christ and love to those around us in ministries like All in Guatemala is one of those. Whenever you give of your tithes and
[00:53:05] offerings, you are supporting the efforts to bring to earth what God had in mind, which is a whole lot of goodness and a whole lot of love. So if you give online, if you give whenever the offering
[00:53:18] plate is passed in front of you, we want to say thank you for partnering with us and partnering

[00:53:24] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_04]
[00:53:24] with god and bringing more goodness into the world gracious god your generosity overflows

[00:59:46] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[00:59:46] accept these our gifts so that with your blessing we may use them to proclaim christ in our

[00:59:52] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_04]
[00:59:52] community and beyond amen so your mission should you choose to accept it is to go into the world

[01:02:45] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[01:02:45] and give them a glimpse of Jesus.
[01:02:49] That's all.
[01:02:51] That doesn't seem too tough, does it?
[01:02:52] By some word that we speak or something that we do, as we heard Meredith say, be goodness for somebody.
[01:03:02] Help somebody see the kingdom of God a little bit clearer.
[01:03:07] And as we do that this week, as we depart here, let's say our other mission, our church mission, which is that we will be the body of Christ in our community through worship, education, fellowship, and service.
[01:03:21] Go in peace.