HUG LIKE MEGAN
Galatians 5: 13-18
LUKE 14: 28-35
SEPTEMBER 27, 2026 – WESLEY SERMON SERIES PART 1
Over the last few weeks something struck home with me … well, lots of things have touched my heart and challenged me but somewhere in my journey I started to have conversations about why I chose to come full circle and return to the United Methodist Church or what was just called the Methodist Church when my parents stood in front of University Methodist Church, as it was called, on Bailey Avenue in Buffalo New York a short distance from the University I would attend as a young adult holding a baby that was me. They stood with two people I never really knew, Hap and Florence, my godparents, to declare the oath of baptism … a pastor put water on my head. They spoke on my behalf … I was a mere baby, but they connected me to God … to Jesus Christ … to the Holy Spirit … and in a full circle in life to being a Methodist.
I was presented for baptism and my parents along with their friends responded with an emphatic “I do” to the question “Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness reject the evil power of this world and repent of your sin?” You see, they were answering for me … the traditional questions of the Christian church … the questions of baptism; a sacrament that matters. A Wesleyan essential. The next question, “Do you accept the freedom, and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in WHATEVER FORMS they present themselves.” Of course, mom and dad and Hap and Florence on my behalf together said, “I do.”
Wesleyan questions … essential concepts for the United Methodist Church and its members like you and me but also a promise that all baptized individuals, which includes I assume all of you in addition to me, have made or make because connecting the dots to a God relationship matters. It does matter, right? We promise … make an oath … to live our lives not for the world but for Jesus Christ. Life choices … because after all that is what faith is … that is the essence of Christian life … Do we choose to actually live the lives of faith that are associated with Jesus Christ? Make that choice.
“Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in His grace, and promise …” and here is a word that is a key to life as a Christian and as you will hear over the next few weeks as I examine what it is to be a Wesleyan or a United Methodist … the question you have heard repeatedly in every baptism and perhaps if you renewed your baptism vows you answered in the affirmative yourselves just as my parents and godparents did … “DO YOU PROMISE to SERVE JESUS CHRIST AS YOUR LORD, in union with the church which Christ has opened to people of ALL AGES … ALL NATIONS … and ALL RACES?” ALL is the word!
Think about your life today … would you answer YES or I DO to those essential questions of faith? John Wesley couched those baptism promises into three simple rules: DO NO HARM; DO GOOD: and STAY IN LOVE WITH GOD.
Our first reading today has Paul making the Galatians pause. Early Christians were asked by Paul to consider who they were … who they really were not just who they said they were when he wrote, “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only don’t let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge in your selfish impulses, but SERVE … friends, do you remember the baptism vow … your promise … an oath that I just shared with you … DO YOU PROMISE to SERVE JESUS CHRIST AS YOUR LORD, in union with the church which Christ has opened to people of ALL AGES … ALL NATIONS … and ALL RACES? …
Paul is writing to the Galatians telling them they are free to choose how to live but they shouldn’t be focused on ME, MYSELF, and I but are called … and I’ll continue to read that passage, “called to serve each other through love. All the Law has been fulfilled in a single statement: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In other words … DO GOOD … SHARE HUGS … don’t mock nor put down someone for the person they are. All the Law, which includes those infamous big ten from Moses … ALL wrapped up in this one … LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF. That’s Wesleyan … that’s a United Methodist creed … that’s the essence of DOING GOOD.
That’s also Jesus Christ … Paul didn’t make up the words he wrote, he was basically quoting Jesus without the benefit of having the Gospels that we thankfully have here in our Bibles … we can read Jesus words and teaching; Paul heard about them from others. Paul knew from people who had walked with Jesus that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, our Savior and Lord since I am assuming you agree with your baptism vows … Jesus didn’t say focus in on what God delivered to Moses … Jesus said, and I quote, “You must love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And, the second is like it: You MUST love all of your neighbors as you love yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
If you wanted to explain to your friends what it means to be a United Methodist those three commitments, which are tied to Scripture, pretty much some up the creed, the promise, the hope, and the challenge for Christians who choose to worship as United Methodists. DO NO HARM; DO GOOD: and STAY IN LOVE WITH GOD.
It all begins with our connection to God and to Jesus Christ but once we identify God as real … Jesus Christ as being God’s gift to humanity both as a rabbi or teacher, and our Savior who rescues us from sin, and then celebrating God’s Holy Spirit as our guide for living life. Do we choose to pick up our Bibles and actually make them a real physical presence in our journey as well as a source of faith connection … it is up to us. We can leave our Bibles on a shelf … we can close our faith down so that our friends, neighbors, social media contacts, and strangers never know we make a claim of belief or that we were baptized where vows were made … commitments promised. It’s our choice.
CHURCH … DO YOU, as Christ’s body, the church reaffirm both your rejections of sin and your commitment to Christ? And, of course the church responds with a resounding WE DO … but in reality many in the church body … many watching a baby get baptized … many could care less about the teachings of Jesus Christ … they actively engage in doing harm through their words or their endorsements of harm … they choose not to do good and sadly were never in love with God.
Some of you might have noticed that I am a fan of a certain football team. It always amazes me how people figure that out but it just seems to happen like osmosis. I went out to breakfast in Virginia Beach and as I left a young couple somehow figured it out and said GO BILLS to me … the volunteer at the registration desk at the hospital … same thing … GO BILLS. Beats the heck out of me how they know … but the young man who plays quarterback for the team a year or two introduced a phrase that is now emblazoned on shirts, hats, and even key chains … a reminder of what matters. I don’t know if Josh Allen is a Wesleyan … or a United Methodist but Josh Allen said and has now repeatedly said even on national television BE GOOD … GOD BLESS … and of course GO BILLS. So, attached to my keys … those words FIRST an essential about how we are to live … BE GOOD tied directly to the relationship with God … GOD BLESS … I will leave the understanding of GO BILLS to those of us who understand what it means to be part of that a community … a community that instantly bonds when we meet someone who shares our common community that always leads to in-depth conversations about where are you from and what is your life about.
John writes in his third epistle, “whoever does good is from God.” That’s simple but I cannot neglect someone from my life whose life lessons will always resonate with me. In the sermon series I start today I will also reflect on the wrist bands I wear. There are currently seven bands around my wrists … one has hardly left my right wrist for more than 20 years but on my left wrist is a special one. It is pink … it has a picture of a pig’s head embossed on it and the words are simple … the words are Wesleyan … it begins with ‘BE A DIFFERENCE MAKER DAILY!!’ And then as you turn it around it says, ‘SHARE HUGS LIKE MEGAN!’
My Megan could hug … best hugger in my life … I can still hear her say, “Dad, let me give you a great big bear hug” but it wasn’t her hugs to family that showcased what we are to do in life. I believe that God gifted me and those who knew Megan including many of you with a life example to either choose to follow or to reject. Megan felt it was her call to love all of her neighbors and to hug them all no matter who they were. She hugged so many people in her 37 years … she left forever impressions … church, don’t you wish you could leave a forever impression on a stranger? On a neighbor? On a coworker? Megan did … SHE DID GOOD … my goodness, my girl DID GOOD.
I have told the stories forever and will even when my time here ends and I reunite with my loved ones … Megan knew prostitutes on the streets of Atlantic City and she hugged them tightly even the ones with AIDS. Megan knew the homeless who wreaked of alcohol and filthy clothing and she gave them bear hugs … our former Governor Christine Todd Whitman loved sharing tight bear hugs with Megan. Megan understood that God expects us to be different so we can be difference makers through our love not just in loving those who looked like us, lived like us, or spoke like us but everyone EVERY SINGLE PERSON and we are to rush to hug and love those being oppressed by society or the powerful. In Acts, we read … “God anointed Jesus Christ of Nazareth with power and he went about doing good.”
We are United Methodists … we are Christians … we are called to do good. John Wesley wrote, “There is scarce any possible way of doing good for WHICH HERE IS NOT A DAILY OCCASION! Here are poor families to be relieved; children to be educated; here are workhouses, wherein both the young and old lady receive the word of exhortation; here are prisons, and therein a complication of all human wants.” And, God calls us to DO GOOD … to LOVE ALL of our NEIGHBORS as we love ourselves and to first and foremost LOVE GOD because when we love God totally and truthfully it will be easier for us to DO GOOD. Wesley wrote about people of faith, “he sees it in the life of God in the soul … the image of God fresh stamped on the heart; an entire renewal of the mind in every temper and thought, after the likeness of Him that created it.”
BE renewed in your faith my friends … and most certainly start hugging like Megan did. She knew how to be faithful to God … understanding Jesus Christ even though she couldn’t read her life was led by the Holy Spirit and I miss her daily example but treasure those memories and can still feel her arms wrapped around me and I can still see her rushing to hug people she knew better than me. AMEN