Sermon (April 6/Lent) “Wilderness Challenges: Our Focus” by Rev. Robert McDowell

April 6, 2025

Beulah UMC & Oak Grove UMC

      During this season of Lent, we have been spending time with Jesus in the wilderness and facing various challenges that can help us to have an even stronger faith. So far, we have faced the challenge of our identity, our trust, our passion, our healing, and this week’s challenge is related to our focus.

     Staying focused is not an easy thing to do in our day to day living. When was the last time you had a conversation with someone without somebody’s phone sending either a text message or some news alert? Our family loves to send group text messages so it’s not uncommon for me to receive 15 to 20 text messages in a span of less than ten minutes.

     Usually, I like receiving these texts except when I’m trying to read an interesting article, prepare a sermon, or set up for a golf shot. Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding, duhding . These messages are sent at a furious pace.

     Sometimes, I have to politely say to please remove me from the group text thread. Most of the time, these are fun to receive but they can also be very distracting when you’re trying to focus.

     One of the reasons that we are invited to spend these forty days in the wilderness is so that we can give more focus to our faith and our relationship with God. Maybe this is why Jesus was sent into the wilderness to prepare for his ministry rather than to the hustle and bustle of the city of Jerusalem.

     Cell phones are useless in the wilderness. And there’s no Netflix. But there’s lots of hiking. Lots of gazing at the stars. And a lot of time to… well to just think and pray.

     Our Gospel reading today offers us a wonderful request that was made by some Greek speaking people who wanted to meet Jesus. They went to one of Jesus’ disciples and said, “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

     This one short request has made its way into several pulpits. You’ll fine it engraved on a plate attached to the pulpit to remind the preacher who is about to speak that his or her main focus as a preacher should always be to help people meet Jesus. That’s it. That’s the purpose of preaching.

     “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

     I want to offer some important ways that can help us keep our focus on spending time with Jesus in a world that bombards us with of lots of ding-ding sounds.

     How can we stay focused on Jesus?

     Several years ago, Bishop Bruce Ough was my bishop of our West Ohio Conference. When Bishop Ough first came to our conference, he encouraged pastors and laity to actually schedule times to meet with Jesus. Yes, that’s right. Schedule times to meet with Jesus.

     He uses a plan that he encouraged us to use as well. He calls it the 1-1-1 Plan. It’s pretty simple. He schedules time with Jesus by spending one hour each day in prayer and scripture reading. He also spends one full weekend a month with Jesus. And then he spends one week a year with Jesus.

     This 1-1-1 Plan helps him to keep his focus on Jesus. It’s an intentional way of blocking out the distractions so that he can keep his focus on God.

 

     My plan is a little different. I do spend each day and specifically each morning with Jesus through prayer and the reading of scripture.

     I don’t schedule a weekend each month like Bishop Ough, but on a weekly basis, my Mondays are my sabbath day where I spend the day in prayer and preparing my sermon. Mondays are my “Jesus and me” days. You’ve heard of the best selling book from several years ago, Tuesdays with Morrie? Well, if I wrote a book, it would be Mondays with Jesus.

     That’s why I protect my Monday’s unless there’s an emergency. I need all of Monday to spend time with Jesus in developing a sermon. Mondays are what helps me to focus on how I have experienced Jesus’ presence in my life because often it’s those holy moments that make it into my sermon.

     I have been doing this same practice of Monday sermon work for years. When I can’t do it for some reason, I feel like I missed my appointment with Jesus.

     It’s not the day of the week that’s important. The important thing is to find that day where you can be especially focused on your relationship with God. That’s the thinking behind having a weekly Sabbath. What day each week can you set aside to intentionally meet with Jesus and keep your focus on him? Maybe for you, it’s a Sunday or another day.

     And the last part of the plan for me is to spend a week away each year with Jesus. I’ve been doing this for the past fifteen or so years.

     A pastor friend of mine and I spend time at his summer lake house to reflect on sermons for the next year. We share in the Sacrament of Holy Communion, read scripture, pray, and do a lot of sermon planning. We also pick a fun place to visit within an hour radius which is usually a historic site. These day visits often lead to future sermon illustrations.

     These are just a couple of different plans that can be used to help us schedule time with Jesus. You might think of a different variation of the plan that is more suited to your unique schedule and needs.

     In describing the importance in having his 1-1-1 Plan, Bishop Ough tells the story of just after he was elected to be a Bishop. He and his wife Char were driving home to Cedar Rapids, Iowa where he was serving as pastor at the time, and during that long drive, Char said, “So, what are we going to do to keep you alive and to keep our marriage alive now that you will be a Bishop?”

     And that’s when they thought of the idea of spending one weekend a month together as a couple. That has worked well for them all these years.

     “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

     In the Anglican and Episcopal denominations, they have a wonderful daily appointment system with Jesus called, “The Liturgy of the Hours.” It’s based on Psalm 119 where the Psalmist says, “Seven times a day I praise you.”

     The Liturgy of the Hours offers specific hours during the day and night to pause and spend time with Jesus. These include 6 am, 9 am, noon,  3 pm, 6 pm, 9 pm, and midnight. Our own United Methodist Hymnal offers two brief services that can be used in a group setting or individually for the morning and another one in the evening.

     One of my favorite prayers is a prayer that was written for the morning service. Here it is:

     “New every morning is your love, great God of light, and all day long you are working for good in the world. Stir up I us desire to to serve you, to live peacefully with our neighbors, and to devote each day to your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord. Amen.”

     For the evening Vespers service, this prayer is often used.

     “O gracious Light, pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven, O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed! Now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the vesper light, we sing your praises, O God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices, O Son of God, O Giver of life, and to be glorified through all the worlds. Amen.”

     The idea is that we have a scheduled time to be with Jesus each day and these daily services and prayers can help us do just that. These times also help to remind us that other people around the world are praying these common prayers as well.

     Now, this might not be practical to use a scheduled time like this each day, but what’s important is that we find a way where we intentionally spend time with Jesus.

     In what ways can we join those Greek speaking people from our Gospel reading today who said, “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

     During my first pastoral appointment, I served as an associate pastor at a large church up in northwest Ohio. I had the privilege of serving with a Senior Pastor who was an incredible role model for me in how he provided loving and caring pastoral leadership in the church. I wish more new pastors who are just beginning the ministry could work with seasoned pastors like I was able to have early in my pastoral ministry.

     Probably the most memorable thing that he would say to me again and again and again was, “Robert, just stay focused on Jesus.” “Just stay focused on Jesus.” He told me this so many times that I can hear him telling me this now. “Robert, stay focused on Jesus.”

     Even after he retired back in the 1990s, we would meet once a month for breakfast or lunch. And he would remind me again, “Robert, just stay focused on Jesus.” Even when I would move to a new church, he would call me on the phone and before each of those calls would end, he reminded me of those words, “Robert, just stay focused on Jesus.”

      Just after the Thanksgiving holiday in 2015, I friend called to inform me of the news that he passed away. Even though it’s now been almost 10 years since I last spoke with him, I will never forget those words he would say to me. “Robert, just stay focused on Jesus.”

      Our wilderness challenge this week is to find ways to stay focused in our faith. And may this challenge lead us to say, “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

Sunday (April 6/Lent) Pastoral Prayer

April 6, 2025 (Lent)

Beulah UMC & Oak Grove UMC

O Lord, as our prayer hymn says, “we want Jesus to walk with us, all along our pilgrim journey, we want Jesus to walk with us.”

 

We are your pilgrims on a journey through the wilderness and moving closer and closer to the cross and the empty tomb. Thank you for these 40 days in the Season of Lent to help us be more intentional in spending time with Jesus. And even though this wilderness is out in the middle of nowhere, it offers us the opportunity to face and overcome the many challenges that come our way including today’s challenge in keeping our focus on Jesus.

 

And today, we give you thanks for sending people our way who remind us to keep our focus on Jesus and who live in such a way that sets aside time with Him. Thank you for our appointment with Jesus this morning in this time of worship and especially on this Sunday as we prepare to come forward to receive the bread the cup. O Lord, we would see Jesus.

 

As we spend quality time with Jesus this morning, we pray that others would see Jesus as well. We pray for those who are on our hearts and minds this day and whatever challenging situations they may be facing in life. We lift up to you those on our church’s prayer list, that they would see Jesus and receive his guidance, his protection, his mercy, his healing, and his goodness.  

 

Lord, help all of us to walk with Jesus, especially when we are facing trials and and our hearts are almost breaking and when our heads are bowed in sorrow. We want Jesus to walk with us.

 

Thank you for the good news that we are always welcome to spend time with Jesus. Help us to overcome the challenge of filling our lives with so many distractions that we lose our focus on what is most important in our lives which is you. And maybe that’s why this is a season for us to give up something for Lent. It’s to remind us that even when we are traveling through the wilderness, when Jesus is walking with us, we have everything we need.

 

We pray this in the name of Jesus who taught us to keep our focus on him by praying this prayer together… 

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Sunday (March 30/Lent) Pastoral Prayer

March 30, 2025 (Lent)

Beulah UMC & Oak Grove UMC

Lord Jesus, on this hymn sing Sunday, thank you for these hymns of faith that remind us that you are with us during this season of Lent. You are not only with us, but you also give us the strength and courage to face the many wilderness challenges that come our way.

 

During this 40 day journey, you have been helping us to face the challenges of our identity, our trust, our passion, and now today, the challenge of our need of healing. Just as the Israelites needed healing when they were following Moses through the wilderness to the Promised Land, we also need healing as we follow you through the wilderness that will lead us to Easter Sunday and your glorious resurrection.  

 

Today, we offer to you the areas of our lives that are in need of some kind of healing, whether it be healing for our bodies, our minds, and our souls. We also lift up to you the people on our prayer list as well as others who are on our hearts and minds this day who are in need of your healing. And we especially prayer for the people of Myanmar and Thailand as they continue to recover from the recent earthquake and for our United Methodist Committee on Relief as they provide much needed supplies to those in need.

 

O God, in this Season of Lent, we thank you for being willing to die on the cross for the sins and the brokenness of the world. Thank you for the cross which reminds us “for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”

No wonder that our opening hymn was, “Amazing Grace.” Your grace is amazing because it is through your life, death, and resurrection that we receive everlasting life and are made whole. Like the Israelites who lifted the pole in the wilderness so that the people could be healed, we lift high the cross of Jesus which reminds us that that you have defeated the power of sin and death.

 

It is at your cross that we lay down all of our brokenness and those areas of our lives that are in need of healing. And may we be able to say, “It is well, it is well with my soul.”

 

It is in your saving and healing name that we now join together in praying this prayer that you taught us to say…

 

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Sermon (March 23/Lent) “Wilderness Challenges: Our Passion” by Rev. Robert McDowell

March 23, 2025 (Lent)

Beulah UMC & Oak Grove UMC

    Today’s story of when Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers is a story about passion. As the disciples watched Jesus expressing his anger, they were thinking about a Psalm in the Old Testament where the Psalmist says, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

     Zeal, passion, this is the wilderness challenge that we are presented with today. Are we passionate about our faith?

     This story of Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers has led some churches to question if they should allow church groups to have fundraisers in between services on Sunday morning. And what does Jesus think about churches that offer coffee and pastries on Sunday mornings?

     Well, I think Jesus is much more concerned about a deeper issue than fundraisers or refreshments before a worship service. When Jesus overturned those tables, he was giving us a powerful sign that God had sent him to overturn sin and death.

     He alludes to this when the money changers asked him to show him a sign of his authority to do such a thing and he told them, “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Jesus saw himself as the Living Temple and it would be through his life, death, and resurrection that God would bring salvation to the world.

     Overturning the tables was so much more than getting upset over people taking coffee into the sanctuary. It was a dramatic sign that Jesus used to get these Temple doorkeepers’ attention and prepare them for the radical new thing that God was about to do through him.

 

     Think of the story just before this this story where Jesus turns water into wine. He chose a wedding as the occasion for his very first miracle. Both of these dramatic stories in this one chapter are meant to get our attention and put us on high alert for what will happen later in John’s Gospel.

     Which brings us to our wilderness challenge for today which is related to our passion. The challenge for us this Sunday is to renew our passion and zeal in what Jesus has done for us through his life, death, and resurrection.

     During the months, weeks, and then days leading up to the presidential election this past fall, a lot of passion was being expressed by many people but it was related more about our choice of politics than it was about our faith. And while our faith and our political leanings do overlap, it can be easy to have more passion for our political party than we do for the party that counts, the one where Jesus is the true King over all creation.

     Sometimes, our passion gets misplaced because of the competing voices around us. When Jesus spent those forty days in the wilderness, he knew that his energy and passion for his work and mission needed to come from God alone.

     One of my favorite verses in the Gospels is where the Gospel of Mark tells us that “Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”

     “And the angels waited on him.”

     Jesus was able to draw his energy from God. Satan was outnumbered there in the wilderness.

 

     Our passion and energy in living out our faith does not come from aligning with the correct political party or a certain political candidate or even a particular church or pastor. Our passion and energy should be rooted in God’s redemptive love for the world.

     Actually, if you think about it, sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that these other sources give us a boost of energy, but it’s not the same kind of energy and passion that only God can provide.

     “Zeal for your house will consume me.” “Your house.” “God’s house.” And by God’s house, Jesus wasn’t referring primarily about the bricks and walls of the Temple in Jerusalem. And by the way, that Temple would eventually be destroyed by the Romans about forty years later and would never be rebuilt again.

     Jesus was identifying himself as God’s Temple. And even though he suffered and died on a cross, he was raised to new life on the third day, never to see death again.

     We don’t draw our passion from the latest building campaign. We draw our passion from the Risen Jesus who is the living Temple.

     The story is told of three bricklayers. It’s is a multi-faceted parable with many different variations but is rooted in an authentic story. After the great fire of 1666 that leveled London, the world’s most famous architect, Christopher Wren, was commissioned to rebuild St Paul’s Cathedral.

     One day in 1671, Christopher Wren observed three bricklayers on a scaffold, one crouched, one half-standing and one standing tall, working very hard and fast. To the first bricklayer, Christopher Wren asked the question, “What are you doing?” to which the bricklayer replied, “I’m a bricklayer. I’m working hard laying bricks to feed my family.”

     The second bricklayer, responded, “I’m a builder. I’m building a wall.”

     But the third brick layer, the most productive of the three and the future leader of the group, when asked the question, “What are you doing?” replied with a gleam in his eye, “I’m a cathedral builder. I’m building a great cathedral to The Almighty.”

     Our passion is rooted in always remembering that we aren’t just laying bricks or building a wall. We are building a great cathedral to The Almighty.

     We are building a great cathedral when we are always growing in what it means to have a loving faith, a learning faith, and a living faith.

     We are building a great cathedral when we worship and praise God.

     We are building a great cathedral when we are blessing families in need here in our community.

     We are building a great cathedral when we encourage one another.

     We are building a great cathedral when our offerings and gifts are used to help support missionaries throughout the world.

     We are building a great cathedral when people’s prayer requests are lifted up every single week.

     We are building a great cathedral when we leave from this place every week to share the good news of our faith with the people in our community.

     Our Temple does have bricks and mortar and thank God, even heating and air-conditioning, but more importantly, our Temple is so much more. It is a haven of blessing and peace for all who enter here.

     This Temple represents the presence of the Risen Christ who offers us hope, forgiveness, direction, purpose, and passion. This is why we sing our hymns. This is why we offer our prayers. This is why we offer our gifts. This is why we serve the needs of others. Jesus is why we do what we do.

     As we go through this week, I invite us to think about this question that the poet, Mary Oliver includes in her poem entitled, “The Summer Day.”

     She asks, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” That’s a great question! That’s a question about passion.

     “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

     Our wilderness challenge today has us focus on some tables that Jesus overturned. A few weeks from now, we will hear about another table story where Jesus will gather with his disciples at the Last Supper around a table.

     At that table, Jesus will break bread and lift a cup and will say, “This is my body broken for you. This is my blood shed for you.” On that Maundy Thursday, we too will gather around the table and eat of of that bread and drink from that cup.

     That table story of the Last Supper will be during what we refer to as Passion week. Passion. That’s a Latin word that means “to suffer.” It is also a word that refers to strong feelings. How can Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross for the sins of the world not lead us to become even more passionate about our faith?

     This is the question for us to ponder thanks to the loud crash of some tables that Jesus overturned. We have one wild and precious life. What do we plan to do with it?