Christian Engagement & Discernment

Our scripture reading for today comes from the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Let us hear these words from Jesus. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like the pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. This then is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, how would be your name? Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. This is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Good morning, church. It's good to be here with you today.

Next week we finish our series on faith and politics, and I'll just tell you there's no one more excited about that than me. I'll be honest, the only reason that I'm doing this is because I don't think I can do anything else and be faithful to what God has asked of me in this time. And I really feel this is something that God has wanted us to talk about. And hopefully it's something that changes things around us. And so today we're talking about Christian engagement and discernment. And as we start talking about it, I want to take just a little aside because I think as we talk about Christian engagement and discernment, that self-awareness is an important factor in this.

And I think it's important for us to understand where it is that we're coming from when we're engaging in the political world. We're engaging in politics and in elections and those kind of things. And so I think it's important to know where it is that we come from. And so, you know, I want to kind of just back up. This may be very evident to all of you, but I want to just articulate it anyway because I think it's important for our discussion and for us to have an understanding of this. You know, it used to be from the beginning of television up until the early to mid 1980s that we really had three sources to get our news from. ABC, NBC, and CBS. And those three networks pretty much knew that they were going to gain roughly a third of the market share for their news. Now, if they had at a time a very charismatic news anchor, like, say, a Walter Cronkite or something, then they might get a little bit bigger of a market share and the others might go down. But they still knew that within reason they were going to get roughly a third of the market share. Then in the 1980s, the ability to have cable come into your living rooms and kind of expanded and more stations started coming out, and we started having more sources for news. Today, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of places where we can go to get our news, not only on TV, but on the Internet, on the Web, to find that. And so whereas you used to just the networks knew they were going to get roughly a third, now they're fighting for every percent of market share they can get because every percent of market share they get means advertising dollars. And that's how they live. That's how they make it. That's how they turn a profit. And so they're fighting for that market share. And so what's happened is that a lot of these media outlets, a lot of these news outlets, they're crafting their news and how they present it based on our political leanings because they want you to come to that. And so they're not going to tell you news in a way that's going to upset you because they don't want you to turn off or turn to another channel. They want you to stay there. And so we've created this dynamic where we're able to get the news in a flavor in a way that we like it best so that it confirms our beliefs that we already have. And so I just want to kind of let you know that.

And I also want to point out a resource. This has been something that's been helpful to me. It's been on my radar for probably 15 years or more now. It's called the Media Bias Chart. You can find on the Internet if you just Google Media Bias Chart. It's a nonpartisan watchdog group that every year they update it. And they have certain criteria. You can go to their website. You can kind of see their criteria on how they rate this and how they base this. And I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it's helpful. And it's on a graph, as you can see. And this graph, it's got on the vertical axis of it, it's got at the top a factual, how factual the reporting is. And at the bottom, it's fabricated. And in the center, it has a huge area for opinion. And it's saying, you know, this is really opinion. They're taking the news, and they're giving you their opinion on it. They're spinning the news for you to make it what you want. So they're taking these news and saying, this is how you should accept this. And so in the middle, there's opinion. And then you got left to right, and that's more self-explanatory. The left is how progressive it is, and it's reporting, and it's spin. And the right is how conservative it is, and it's reporting, and it's spin. And so you have it all along there. And as you see, it's pretty good, close to a bell curve. So for every far left bottom, there's a far right bottom, and vice versa as it goes up. And so you have all the spectrum on both sides, just about equally there. I will say, what's helpful for me is if I really need to know what's actually happening with all the spin, and as somebody who's kind of followed this chart for, like I said, about 15 years, always at the very top in the very center, which means factual, non-biased in the center. It's not leaning to the left or the right. There's three news outlets, and that's the Associated Press, AP, Reuters, and BBC.

And I always kind of, if I really need to know what's actually going on, I try to go and find it there. So just know that's a resource, and it's there if it can be helpful to you, and to kind of see at least where we're coming from, or at least where the sources where we get our news are coming from. As we talk about discernment, I want to pull back from discerning around politics and just talk about discernment in general. Discernment best happens in community. And I say that because the election process is corporate discernment. It's us discerning as a city, or a county, or a state, or a nation, who we want leading us. And so that's an important piece of this about discernment, is that at its best it happens in community. In fact, John Wesley, the spiritual father of this part of Christianity called Methodism, taught that discernment best happens always through community. Community, he said, is where our individual discernment, what I'm thinking, can be tested to see if it's really something of God, or if it's our own personal selfish desires.

Specifically, he talked about how we discern what Scripture says, how we look at Scripture and come to understand what Scripture means, that we need to test our own understanding of Scripture so that we don't have Scripture only mean what we want it to say. Wesley felt that there are three lenses that we could use best to help us to understand Scripture. And those are tradition, reason, and experience. By tradition, what he meant is that we have 2,000 years of tradition of the church. The church has been around and has been trying to understand and unpack Scripture for 2,000 years. And if all of a sudden today, in 2026, we say we've come to a different understanding of Scripture, what the Bible says, than what the 2,000 years of the church has said, maybe we should pause and think, do I really have better insight than 2,000 years of the church? The tradition gives us a lens through which to view Scripture.

Reason is just what it says. God has given us the ability to reason. He's given us intellect. And God asks us not to check our minds at the doors of the church. You should be questioning what I'm saying. You should be reflecting on it and saying, is this in line with what Scripture says? The same holds true when you go and read the Bible. You shouldn't just read it and then read the commentary at the bottom and say, well, what the commentary says is correct. You should be using your God-given intellect to read through it and to look at it and to see what you think it says, because God has given us the ability to reason. And then third experience is the lens that Wesley felt was important for us to look at in our examination of Scripture. Both individual and collective experiences helped to shape us and form us in who we are. But Wesley warned that we needed to be careful because our individual experiences can mislead us. They can lead us down a path that's not what God intended because of our own biases, because of our own desire for what we want, our own desire for our selfish outcomes. The greater lens is the collective experience of the entire community of faith. For instance, let's take this not in politics, but when somebody would come to John Wesley in his day and would say, Mr. Wesley, Reverend Wesley, Dr. Wesley, I don't know how they referred to him. I feel a call to ministry. I feel like I'm being called to be a pastor. That's their individual experience, their individual discernment. One of the first questions that Wesley would always ask them, how has that call been confirmed in the community of faith? How has your call been confirmed through the experiences of the church? For the greater community around you have, others seen that call lived out in you.

It's still a question that we ask of our candidates for ministry today. Pastor Rebecca grew up in this church, and when she was answering her call to ministry, she had to go through that process of discernment here, in which groups would be asked that question, how has Pastor Rebecca's call been confirmed to you? Pastor Steve and I both had to do the very same thing in our home churches as we were answering that call to ministry. Yes, my experience of what I feel is my call is a part of it, but my own selfish desires on what I want could come into play. So how has that call been witnessed by others? What are others' experience towards me? Now, these four things, tradition, reason, experience, as lenses to view scripture have become known in Wesleyan circles as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. I will say that John Wesley never called it that, and I think there's a great danger in calling it that, because they're not four equal sides or four equal corners, kind of like we think of with a quadrilateral four 90-degree corners. Tradition, reason, and experience are lenses through which we view scripture, but scripture is always primary.

The other three are tools that help us to understand scripture. Let me put discernment in a different category that maybe we can all understand better. I like ice cream, and I might discern that I should be able to eat ice cream every single night. I've said, you know, I've thought about it, I've prayed about it, and God wants me to have ice cream every night. Amen? All right, let's pray and go home. But if I were to include my doctor into this discernment, he might have a different opinion. Nor if I were to include my dentist into this discernment, there might be another different opinion. If I were to include my wife in this, she might have a different opinion about it as well. And as expensive as ice cream is these days, where do I include my bank account? In the discernment, I might also come to a different understanding. You see how discernment can go awry. I had a selfish motivation for wanting ice cream every night, but discernment is best done in community. We can be deceived by our own personal wants and desires, and it can impact us from seeing the fullness of what the best decision is. This happens in elections, too. In my opinion, I think we can become so married to a party or a candidate that we can fail to discern because we think only about ourselves. And as we talk about our engagement in politics, I know our minds want to go to the federal level, go to the presidents and do the congressional elections and those kind of things, but truthfully, our local elections have a greater impact on us than those elections do, though those national elections do impact us.

And also, I will say that we can have a bigger difference in the outcomes and the impact on our communities at the more local level as well in our city and county and even state elections. I want to share with you as we talk about Christian engagement and discernment about how I approach elections. Now, I realize I'm different. I've known that about me for a long time, and the way I approach elections is different than the way most people do as well, so I only offer this as my perspective on it, my thoughts on it. But when I look at an election, as I look at who to vote for in any given election, one of the things I look for, in fact, the number one thing that I try to look at, try to discern, and who I'm going to vote for, is integrity. I think integrity matters. It's important. And I believe that our nation takes its values from its leaders, and I hold integrity at the highest level. It means something to me.

The second thing that I look at when I'm deciding on who to vote for is, who do I want handling? What may happen tomorrow? What may come out of the blue that we have no clue about today? Who do I want leading us in the midst of crises? For instance, if a tornado comes back through Lebanon and Wilson County like it did in March of 2020, who do I want as my county mayor, as my city mayor, as my city councilors, county commissioners? Who do I want leading us when something impacts our community so deeply as that tornado did? Likewise, if we were to have another flood in the state of Tennessee like we did in 2010, who do I want to be governor to lead us in the midst of the response to that, in the midst of so many people across our state hurting? Who do I want in our state legislature leading us making decisions that are going to impact us, hopefully help us? And God forbid if we have another terrorist attack like we did on 9-11. Who do I want as our president? In the response to that, who do I want as our senators and representatives in Congress working to make sure we're protected and safe and that we're responding in a way that's correct? Those are the things that I think about in the midst of who I'm voting for. But I think it's important to have a process that you want to follow on what's important to you on how you engage in the political system. Early voting begins this week, and the election is only a couple weeks after that. And I want to share with you probably some near 300-year-old rules about voting from John Wesley again, as he would talk to his churches about how to vote. And he had three rules that he would refer to about how Christians, especially those of us who call ourselves Methodists, should approach the election process. The first one is to vote without fear or reward for the person that they judged most worthy. So don't try to gain from it. Don't try to profit from it. Vote for the person you believe is most worthy. Number two, don't speak any evil of the person you vote against. And number three, take care that your spirits are not sharpened against those that voted on the other side.

I think those are wise words for us still almost 300 years later. I also think it's important as we engage in the political process as Christians to do our homework. Research what these persons stand for. Do your homework and go and find out what they're running on. What does their website say? What does their social media say? What do they say it in debates as they engage in public forums? How are they saying? What do they stand for? Do you know that only about a third, this is a nationwide stat, only about a third of Americans know who their congressperson is and can name their congressperson. And I suspect that number is even lower in the state of Tennessee since we just re-district in the person that has been our congressperson, is probably for about half of the state of Tennessee no longer our congressperson. And so if we're that uninformed and in the best election turnout that we've had in the last 25 years, only 50% of the people have voted. So we're not engaging in the process and Christians should be leading the way and engaging in this process because it's important. I would also say that an important part of how we engage the political process is through prayer.

That's one of the tools that we have in our bag that we have at our disposal that no one else really has, that we have the ability to pray. Our text for today comes from the Sermon on the Mount. Truthfully the entire Sermon on the Mount is important to us because what it shows us is how we can pray and then put legs to our prayers because what happens too often is that we come to God and we say, all right, God, I don't know what to do. I don't know who to vote for. I don't know how to select. So I just turn it over to you and then we kind of wipe our hands of it and want God to do his thing. But that's really not what prayer is supposed to be about. Prayer is when we engage with God and we share our hearts and then we listen to what God has for us and then we become more aligned with who God is and then we go and live out what God tells us in the world around us. And the Sermon on the Mount challenges us. The Sermon on the Mount should step on every one of our toes if we take it seriously because it helps us to understand what it means to be like Jesus. But in our specific text within the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is teaching on prayer and it leads up to what we now call the Lord's Prayer. But as he begins it, if you heard when we read the text, it says, when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites.

Now, why on earth would Jesus start his teaching on prayer like that? When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites. Basically, he's calling out those who pray in the public square but do it for the show of others and not of God. Their actions don't line up with their beliefs. And you know, I worry about that so much from where I stand from what's important to me and that's to try to represent God in a way that brings honor and glory, but I worry that when our Christian faith comes into spotlight in the public square, in the political arena, that people are doing it for the approval of others and not the approval of God. And those times, and we've all seen it, when it comes to life that their private lives do not line up with their public persona, then the world looks at us all collectively like we're hypocrites. You know, that's the reason, the number one reason given for people who don't go to church and why they don't go to church is because the church is full of hypocrites, they say. And our witness is diminished. So maybe that's why Jesus said, when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. He also teaches us, and you better have your steel-toed boots on for this one, to pray that we should be forgiven in the same vein that we forgive others. He asks us to pray that we're forgiven, to ask God to forgive us the same way that we forgive others. Let me ask you this, church. Do you think we do a good job of forgiving others? Collectively as the church, as a society.

How do each of us do individually at forgiving others? And if we're asking God to forgive us in the same way that we forgive, to extend grace to us in the same way that we extend grace to others, then what kind of grace should we receive from this? And I'm not really even talking about politics right now. I'm talking about life. I'm talking about people who have had an argument, maybe about politics. And now they don't feel like they can sit down at Thanksgiving dinner together as a family. Or they don't feel like they can sit in the same pew together at church. I feel like that's an indication for us that we need to do better at forgiving others so that we can be forgiven in that same vein. And finally, as we're talking about Christian engagement, we need to remember in this prayer of Jesus's that he asks us to pray that God's kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven. And what that means is that it's not here yet. That God's kingdom is not on earth like it is in heaven.

God's not in control on earth like he is in heaven. That's why he asked us to pray for that to happen, which means it's our job to work to make it that way. It's our job to help bring God's kingdom more fully on earth just as it is now in heaven. And the way we do that is by allowing our lives to be molded more into the likeness and image of Christ. So when the world sees us and how we live our lives and how we engage in politics and how we carry out our work with integrity and how we live our life with grace and forgiveness, when they see that, they see Jesus and they're drawn to him. We aren't called to work toward a party or a politician's reign. None of us are. We are called, however, to work toward the reign of Jesus. And at the end of the day, I do think it's important for Christians to engage in the political process. I think it's important that Christians run for office, that they offer themselves in public service, serving each other to make our world better. I think it's important that Christians should be campaigning for people that they think can do the job the best. I think it's especially important that Christians vote in elections. It's our civic duty. But all of that pales in comparison to us acting like Jesus as we do it. That's our duty to our Lord, given to us by Jesus. The work we do bringing the kingdom of God on earth, as in heaven, far outweighs the work we do to get anyone elected to office.

Thanks be to God.