IN MY LIFE
1 Peter 4: 12-14 & 5: 6-11
JOHN 17: 1-11
May 17, 2026
There are places I’ll remember all my life … though some have changed. What about you? What memories do you carry with you that reflect on the person you are today? How are you identified? … How do you want others to identify you? Do you remember your baptism? Do you keep that connection to God … HOLY?
I have been asking you to bring your Bibles to church on Sunday’s. I have been thinking about the various Bibles that I own because each one reminds me of an era in my life’s journey. Yes, I do know that my life is uniquely my own but as a person of faith … as a pastor whose life was dramatically flipped upside down over the course of three weeks back when the century was turning … holding a Bible in my hands reminds me of God … my faith … and my life. What does a Bible remind you of? Do you have one or many?
I had a conversation with the son of the woman whose funeral service was on Friday about faith. He was raised Roman Catholic but the church rejected him and he has now rejected God; dismissed God. It was funny how he was able to delineate specific moments in his life where he attempted to associate with God … with a church … with faith until he gave up. He said to me that Christianity is the world’s largest book club where no one ever reads the book … where no one knows how they are supposed to live. They don’t even try to do what Jesus said to do, he told me; even though they label themselves as Christians. That’s why he rejects it all … denies that there is a God and didn’t want to hear that his mom, a woman of faith, is in heaven.
We heard this morning how John caught Jesus in a moment of prayer to God … “I have revealed Your name, GOD, to the people you gave me from this world. They were yours and you gave them to me … I gave them the words you gave me.”
And so, I ask you to bring your Bibles to church … to this church that welcomes people with love and enthusiasm … we experience joy in worship and great fellowship and friendship amidst the crowd. To take hold of a Bible from your home … to bring it here.
But on this day when the Annual Conference of the Greater New Jersey United Methodist Church begins to meet … when I know that I will hear the names of churches that are closing … when pastors are being shuffled from one church to another … when friends of mine are retiring … when we hear the list of those who have passed away this last year and when our Bishop tries to rally us and challenge us … I am taken aback by what that young man said to me. Churches rejected him … churches are rejecting Jesus Christ with a regularity … some folks even reject the promises they make to God.
Are we merely a club? And I speak rhetorically while expanding my consideration to the neighborhoods of Gloucester County and beyond … but then again Westville United Methodist Church is closing … Colonial Manor United Methodist Church is closing … we will never again have shared Thanksgiving services … Ash Wednesday services or Tenebrae services with the members of those churches because those churches where so many were baptized and married and others discovered their faith will be mere shadows of history. So, my thoughts this morning come back to where we are at. Those churches were once crowded as was St. Paul’s in Paulsboro just a decade ago and does anyone remember that there was once a United Methodist Church in Wenonah?
Over these next few weeks I am going to use music from my life … actually music from my childhood that I still hold onto sixty years later … to provide a reflection on our faith walk, our faith potential and perhaps these moments will provide focus on my journey but I am hoping to nudge each of you whether you are here in person or watching online to consider your faith journey in this reality called life. To once again actually hear Jesus Christ … hear God … sense the Holy Spirit and willingly and excitedly reinvigorate your faith to a level that those in your life identity your faith as an essential element in your walk. As I prepared for Julie’s service I heard how important church and God have always been to her. Even as cancer’s evil pain and suffering overtook Julie … I knew she was watching online every single Sunday including the Sunday before she went home to God. She would shout out to us online … to her church … this church family. Amidst everyone she loved … she loved God and Christ even more. It’s one of her legacies to her family and friends. They even displayed her membership certificate from this church at her service … do your friends and family know about God in your life? Church in your life?
Peter wrote, “Resist the devil who is on the prowl. Stand firm in faith do so in the knowledge that your fellow believers are enduring the same suffering throughout the world. The God of grace, the One who called you into His eternal glory in Christ Jesus will Himself restore, empower, strengthen, and establish you.” Do you even allow God to restore you … besides the still waters and in the green fields? Did you bring your Bible to church today?
Perhaps the number of Celebrations of Life that I have had a role in during these last few weeks has pushed me along in this direction because I know that time is … well to take you back with me to a theatre in Greenwich Village where my roommate and friend Kevin Portz and I went with squirt guns in hand along with some rice … we heard these lyrics from the movie screen as the audience joined in the revelry … “It’s astounding … time is fleeting … madness takes its toll … but listen closely … not for very much longer.” Suddenly FIFTY YEARS … gone … life changes … places I remember all my life some have changed … some forever … some have gone and some remain.
And those two young men in their early twenties would have never imagined on that night in New York City that 50 years later one would be a United Methodist pastor in New Jersey and the other an Episcopal Deacon in Baton Rouge Louisiana. Clearly God had a plan for us that was not even a minimal glimmer in our minds as we sang with great enthusiasm along with a couple of hundred others … “It’s just a jump to the left … and then a step to the right.” We went to church on Sunday’s … we knew where our Bibles were … and now … we both laugh about it … celebrating our faith realizing that time is fleeting and we could have chosen to hide our Bibles away. We could have ignored God … joined in the world and yes, we both had very successful careers before ministry took us to where we are today. And, amazingly we are both what we once considered to be … we are old, yet we are still active.
This morning we once again experienced the joy that this simple baptism font can offer. As Mike Keegan chatted with me before Joanne’s service, he mentioned that their kids had been baptized … here … in this church … some unnamed pastor in the long line of pastors who came before me had dipped his hand into the Holy Water repeating the words of faith that are the essential words of baptism so valued that almost every Christian denomination uses the same exact words … rejecting evil in all the forms that evil might present itself. Yes, friends EVIL exists, Peter wrote about it … God exists too just look up in the evening sky … God is alive and well even though some church folks push people out the door and away from God because they don’t like who they are.
We are called to stand firm in our faith even if we suffer in this journey. Jesus revealed God to the world in a personal up-close way to offer us a better understanding that God is wrapped up in love but in that love there is a commitment … a commitment that comes from any of us involved in baptism. A VOW before GOD … from all of you … the church family and from the parents of the little ones on whom I have splashed waters on. Making a promise … a commitment … that’s baptism … all too often neglected.
God and Jesus Christ have embraced all of humanity … they have loved them all. Teaching us … bringing a message to us that in our lives we are to love God more. That we need to stop and think about God … about Christ … not just on Christmas Eve and Easter but that we need to often stop and think about them … and love them more. You know the first commandment LOVE GOD and then LOVE all of our neighbors.
DO YOU … EACH OF YOU … before God and each other … CONFESS JESUS CHRIST AS YOUR SAVIOR putting your whole trust in His grace? That’s one of those baptism questions from your life, my life, our life and it leads to the challenge in MY LIFE and I would hope in yours to actually hold true to the promise to SERVE JESUS CHRIST as LORD in union with the church that is opened to EVERYONE!
It’s interesting how this journey we call life has an inherent ability to take us on a varied but common track from our birth through the years that we are given. I lost my faith once … just like the young man who I was talking to who shared how the bureaucratic non-faithful church and church leaders had pushed him out … a minister in charge of a church pushed me out … but this Bible … came into my life … a man named Bill Southrey brought me back to God and Christ and gave me this Bible … this is my Kitchen Bible … it carries a lot of meaning to me. In a way this Bible rescued me … and in those moments I would never have imagined being here today and so I have no idea what God is taking me tomorrow.
Though I know I’ll never lose affection for people and things that went before … I wonder how many baptisms I have witnessed and shared these words … With God’s help we will proclaim the good news and live according to the example of Christ. We will surround these persons with a community of love and forgiveness that they may grow in their service to others.
So, as I sing the songs of my life … remembering those I have sung along with … as you hold your Bible are you remembering … and when you pray to God do you often or at least occasionally say to God … “In my life, I love you more?” AMEN
IN MY LIFE THERE IS NO ONE COMPARES with YOU!