Shane Hughes 1-4-26

Here. And if this is your first time here, it's a New Year's resolution for you. Maybe you felt that pull to get back into church. Man, we are so glad you're here today. As Ashley said and others have said, Jeff has said it's.

It's a good time to start new habits. And if your new habit is showing up at church, I want you to know that this is not a habit that just you came up with on your own. We believe that the spirit of God moves and works through people and even through your. Your. Your.

Your experiences and your notions and your inclinations. And so if you showed up here, there's a good chance that's the spirit of God propelling you into something new, an important part of your life. And this is, you know, New Year's is a great time for new commitments and new leafs and. And trying new things. And I think for.

For many people, that's like going to the gym. And so for the next couple of weeks, my gym is going to be extra crowded. And I love that. I love that there are new people there, and I want them all to feel welcome. I want them all to know that nobody's watching them.

Nobody cares that they're there. They're just kind of vaguely glad that they're there. Unless you're on my machine and then get off.

Last year, there was a bunch of new people there and somebody, I think they were just trying to be friendly, and they looked at me and they said, wow, is this your first week, too?

No, no, no, it's not. Despite all the evidence. You see, I've been doing this for a while, and they probably responded because they had high, I think, social and emotional intelligence with, wow. You must have really come a long way then.

No, no, I haven't. I have entitled this sermon, how to Be a Christian in 2026, despite all the Christians around us, which sounds a lot more pessimistic than it actually is. So I just need you to hang with me for a minute as we delve into Luke chapter nine. If you have your Bible with you or your app, open it up so you can kind of follow along. We're going to be moving around a little bit through this text, but before we jump into the sermon, let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, I am grateful for this church. I'm grateful for the way that it serves in your name in this city, city and across the world. I'm grateful, as Molly said, for the legacy that has gone before us, whether it's parents and grandparents or Great grandparents or just somebody that took the time to tell me about Jesus. So, Father, may this church be a light in this community. May it be hope and joy and peace and love.

Maybe embody your son Jesus in every way, full, fully and completely. And to that end, Father, as we, as we commit ourselves to that task again for another year and serving in your name, I pray that you pour through me the gift of preaching that I might speak your truth and love to these, your people. It's together that the church says amen. All right, so right before this text that we hear, there's a couple of important things that happen. The first is that Luke tells us at the beginning of chapter nine that Jesus is taken up in a transfiguration.

He is bodily changed by the power of the Spirit, and nobody knows what to do. And this is one of the most powerful moments in Luke. The resurrection is coming and the cross is coming. But this moment in Luke gets herald by many scholars and theologians and thought leaders and different Christians as a key moment. It's a hinge in the book of Luke.

Everything changes after that. This. And despite everything changing in Jesus mission and purpose, the disciples still don't always get it. Jesus is turning his face toward Jerusalem to achieve the goal that he needs to achieve. And immediately in Luke's Gospel, the disciples get into an argument about who's going to be the greatest, who's going to be the most important, who's going to be remembered, who's going to have the legacy, who's going to.

Who's going to carry the reins after Jesus moves on, who's going to get to be second in command, whose lives are going to be known and honored? And Jesus does an interesting thing. He takes a child and he places the child among the disciples and he says, look, if you welcome this child, then you will be called the greatest. Now, other places, Jesus says something like, you must become like a child to come into the kingdom of God. Now, in our minds, becoming like a child might mean becoming more playful or becoming more imaginative to becoming more carefree in our lives, because that's how children kind of are represented.

You gotta. But in. But in the first century, children aren't understood that way. Children are sometimes liabilities because they're not useful yet. So they're just, you know, kind of walking negative cash flows.

That's college students for us. But. And they're not particularly valuable. They may not survive. Now, they are deeply loved because every parent has that instinct.

Most parents have that instinct to deeply love their children. But Children are expected to be quiet and obedient and just kind of accept the world that's been handed to them. And so in some ways, what Jesus is saying is not that you need to become more carefree. What Jesus is saying is you must become serious about fitting into this world. And this is why, child are the kind of, the least valuable of things around them.

And so Jesus says, now I want you to realize that this text is a little bit different. Jesus says that it's not the greatest power that will be great in the kingdom of heaven, and it's not the weakest power. It's the one that holds the door open for others.

Do you know that person in your life? Do you know that person that kept their foot in the door so that you could get on to the elevator in the most literal sense? Like, they saw you and they just made a space for you or someone that sees you coming with a handful of boxes and they hold the door open so you can get through. In Texas, this is very polite. I think this happens all the time here where you don't have automatic doors.

Somebody's going to hold the door for you. The rest of the world, not always the case, but there's more than that, right? It's somebody that lets you in.

Maybe most places are not nearly as terrifying as a middle school lunchroom. And we all have that experience. Who's the person that invited you to the table to sit down? Who pulled out the chair so that you could be a part? Who is the person?

It's not that person has the greatest power. It's the one that keeps. Holds the door open. It's the greatest protector who ensures that even the weakest among us still have a place, even if they're not valuable or socially productive or economically productive, that they still belong. That's the person Jesus says that will become the greatest of heaven.

And so the disciples are missing it about who's going to be greatest on one side. On the other side of the story, they go through this Samaritan, or at least they're going toward a Samaritan village. And the Samaritans say, nah, not welcome. Now, this is a very serious infraction in the ancient Near East. And in the first century, there's a Phoenician parable or proverb that goes something like, welcome the sailors when they come into your towns.

For if you do not show them hospitality, your sons will not be shown hospitality when they travel the seas. Right? It makes sense if you don't show hospitality where you Live. Then when you travel, you're not going to receive it. Because in the ancient near east and Israel in the first century, there's no Motel 6.

I mean, there's no Hyatt. There's no place where you can just kind of stop and expect to be able to buy a place to stay. If somebody doesn't let you into your house, you're sleeping on the street, and you can get robbed, you can get beaten. Traveling is dangerous in the first century. And so when the Samaritans do not offer hospitality because they hear that Jesus is going to Jerusalem, first of all, they misread that situation completely because what they're reading is, oh, he's going to support the power that we don't love.

And so James and John, in all of their brilliance and intelligence, they say, hey, should we just firebomb that city? Jesus, what do you think? Now, in my mind, in my imagination, Jesus is walking toward the Samaritan city. James and John are behind him. Maybe this is just because I'm a father.

And then they say that boneheaded thing, and I think he just freezes for a minute, and I think he just locks eyes on the horizon.

And then the text says he rebukes them. Now, it doesn't say he harshly rebukes them. They would add that if that were the case, he rebukes them. How does Jesus rebuke them in this case?

What does he say? And why do they choose fire?

Well, it could be because they know their Old Testament. It's because they've read the Torah and they've read the prophets, and so they know the story and the history of Israel, that when the people of God come into a town where they don't show hospitality, then God smites them. It might be a reference to Genesis, about Sodom and Gomorrah, where Lot and his Lot lives. There the angels are not welcomed and God kills him. In fact, in Ezekiel chapter 16, it says as much, behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom.

She and her daughters had pride, surfeit of food, prosperous ease, and did not aid the poor and the needy. Or if you look closely at your Bible, you see a little footnote there, and it mentions Elijah. And so you might turn to the First Kings and Second Kings and flip through and find places where Elijah called down fire. Now, the most obvious one is at Mount Carmel with the. The prophets of BAAL and that.

That struggle that happened. But I don't think that's what James and John are thinking about. I think it's in Second Kings, chapter one, where the king of Israel sends a captain and 50 men to come and capture Elijah. And Elijah is sitting up on a hill and he calls down, fire. And he kills the captain and the 50 men.

And so the king sends another captain and 50 men. And the captain says, are you this man of God? The king wants to see you. And he calls on fire again and destroys those 50 men and the captain. And then the king sends a third captain.

And the captain, he's seen captain one and captain two. And. And he just kind of stops from a distance and says, hey, would you not blow us up, please?

The king wants to talk to you.

And Elijah goes with him. And so maybe it's about hospitality, or maybe it's about how to deal with the opposition.

But he rebukes them. Is it quietly? Is it loudly? Is it with exhaustion?

And then just to show them the better way, he chooses another road that goes around that village to somewhere else to sleep. And it's almost as if he looks back at them as he chooses the second road and says, see?

So there's. There's a story on the front end about who's going to be the greatest. There's a story on the back end about how do we deal with people that aren't showing us hospitality, who are seemingly against us, who are our enemies. But in between these two stories, that makes us question us, actually, about everything, about being disciple. Actually, looks like there is this third story.

And the third story is so captivating because John comes to Jesus and he says, hey, we saw some people that were doing exorcisms in your name, but they weren't of us. And so we tried to stop them. It's kind of like when. I mean, I think what this makes me question is like, does Jesus have a brand here? I mean, is there like a trademark for this?

Is there a copyright on Jesus actions and behaviors? And these guys know that they're not like us, and so we should be able to, I don't know, sue them. Infringement. Make them stop. At least we got to do something about this Jesus.

It's kind of like one of my friends and I, we discovered that Costco was making pants that looked exactly like Lululemon pants. Now, if you know anything about Lululemon pants for males, you may not know this, but Lululemon makes pants for males. And. And they're amazing. They feel so soft.

The fabric is fantastic, but they cost like 130 bucks. So who's doing that, right? But Costco makes another pair of pants. They're almost the same. They're almost identical.

And they only cost $19.95. So of course, we, as a group, on our group chat, we get together and we get to figure out, okay, who's got a Costco membership. And so we got to find friends that don't live in Abilene, that's for certain. And we order our Costco pants that are Lulu's and they come in the mail and we put them on. And one of my friends already has a pair of Lulu pants.

And so we all gather and we just kind of compare to see, are these the same as the Lulu pants? And we decide, close enough, good enough. You know, like it's good to go. And sure enough, in the news, we see about four to six weeks later that Lululemon is suing Costco because it's too close on brand.

I wonder if this is a knockoff. And that's what the disciples are fearing about.

But also, I think this might be rivalry because earlier, I think a chapter before this, the disciples are unable to exercise a boy, a child. They're unable to do it. And Jesus says, calls them part of a faithless generation, and he exercises the child. Well, these guys are able to do what the disciples cannot do. And we don't know this unknown exorcist.

It's just not one of the disciples. And the reality is, is that we want our people to win. We want our pastors and our leaders. We want them to be dynamic and forceful and eloquent. That's what we want out of our politicians.

The one things that American wants more than anything else is to win. Even our stories about the underdogs, they end up winning. Have you seen a movie about an underdog who doesn't win in the end? No, you have not. Rudy wins in the end.

He gets to play even though he's does not belong anywhere near a football field. Hoosiers, the smallest basketball team in Indiana, gets to go to the state final. And they win. Rocky, this, you know, boxer that shouldn't do it, he pulls off a win and then a loss. But then he wins again, over and over and over.

Kung Fu Panda, which is the quintessential movie, a story about an underdog. Po defeats everybody. Dodgeball, you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. We want them to win despite all the odds, no matter what happens. If they come from a bottom and it makes their story all that more rich, they must win.

But I don't know if that's the story of Jesus.

I don't know if that's the value of Jesus.

Nothing dismisses you faster than losing in America.

And again, I think Jesus kind of sets his eyes on the horizon and he takes that big deep of peace that Suzetta is always telling us to do, and he lets it out.

And I wonder how he says this line, look, if they're not against us, they're for us. At least that's what it says in Mark. In Luke, he makes it even more personal. Do not stop him. Jesus said, for whoever is not against you is for you.

And I don't know how we miss this text in the churches of Christ, But at some point in our history, it's like there was this moment when we had to choose between being right and being good. And that's not always a binary choice in your life. Sometimes the right thing is the good thing, and sometimes the good thing is the right thing. But it felt like at some point in our world, we had to choose between being right and being good, and we chose to be right. And it feels like we sacrificed good.

And I think you've probably had that moment, too, where you've sacrificed a friend because you were willing to die on that hill. Sometimes that's the right choice, where you've damaged your marriage or your relationship with your kids because you needed to be right.

And we flipped those words around. We flipped around the words of Jesus, and we've said the opposite. If they are not with us, then they are against us. And we have said that about all sorts of doctrinal things. Whether you can have one cup or many cups, whether you.

Who gets to pass the trays vertically, because we know who passes them horizontally, that's everyone. Whether you get to pay to have a preacher, what is authorized in worship, who is authorized to speak on the platform, and if we can cooperate with other churches, what is the authorized structure of leadership? Even that word authorized kind of gives me. I don't know, it's like a little bit of an anxiety attack, right? We have lived this life for a long time because we sacrificed being good for being right.

And if you weren't with us, then you were against us.

And the reality is, brothers and sisters, that if you follow that line to its logical end, there's only one place that leads you. You end up being alone, because it's. You and your spouse are the only people that agree on everything doctrinally. And quite honestly, you're a little bit suspicious of your spouse, right? Like C.S.

lewis writes this incredible fable, parable I don't know how you name it. Called the Great Divorce. It's about going into hell and. And this person travels to the edge of hell where you can just create a building, and if you don't like it, you can just go with your mind and create another building. But what it does is it just drives people infinitely far apart.

And he travels for millennia to get to the edge of hell, where he uses a vast telescope just to see the edge. Like, there's one place that, that leads you and that's alone.

And I wish these words of Jesus had been a little more bold with a little larger font size in our Bibles.

And even though Hyland may have been an iconoclast in the Churches of Christ tradition, I think that we also must be careful because we still have that DNA rattling around inside of us. And just because you make a decision that's not congruent with the wider movement does not mean that you're not immune to thinking that if you're not with us, you're against us. That's not what Jesus said.

But the disciples and we ourselves, the reality is we don't have exclusive rights to the person and the work of Jesus.

Lulu may think that they own the copyright for these amazing pants, but no one owns the copyright of Jesus.

And in my own life, I had two experiences. They were both in the sixth grade that kind of fit into this story. One was with my best friend and the other was with my arch nemesis. My arch nemesis was a girl named Valerie, and we were in the same math class together. And we just happened because of the names of our last names sitting side by side from one another.

And she and I were the two highest scorers in the math class. And, oh, that competition was fierce. Every quiz and every test, every assignment, it was me looking over to see what her score was and comparing it against mine. And she was an amazing math student. I mean, I was smarter, but she was an amazing math student and she was this amazing person.

And in that kind of sixth grade confusion of hormones, I wondered, is this the one? Because she's smart, she's good at math, and we're friends.

And then one day I found out that her family, her family was Mormon, and in my Church of Christ fundamentalism, that changed.

And I don't. I think there's serious differences between the way that the Church of the Latter Day Saints and Christianity understand the nature of Jesus. And I think that's important.

But I also know that Jesus said, if they're not against you, they're for you. The other friend of mine was Asriel. And Asriel and I lived about a mile apart from one another, but we loved doing the same things. And so he was always at my house and I was always at his house, and we loved playing together. And then there was one time, it was in the spring that I came to his house expecting to play for a little while and then have dinner with his family and then go home.

And he said, we're not having dinner yet. You need to go home. And I said, why? He said, well, it's. It's Ramadan and we're fasting.

And I didn't. I didn't know what Ramadan was. I didn't even know what fasting was. And so I went home and I told my family, I said, did you know that Asriel is Muslim? And my parents go, oh.

And I didn't go over to his house anymore after that.

He was my good friend.

And the words of Jesus echo in my head.

Jesus says, whoever is not as against you is for you somehow in the, in the economy of, of the kingdom, in the work of the heaven. Now, there are serious differences between Christianity and Islam. There's no denying that Jesus again stands in the middle of that discussion.

But Jesus words echo in my head. Martin Buber was a famous theologian in the 19th century. He was Jewish, and he wrote this book called I Thou. And it's a way of understanding people and Wayne of understanding others. And he basically said there's two ways of perceiving the world or the people around you.

You can have an I thou relationship, which means that you see the image of God that God has given them in them. Or, or you can have an I it relationship, which means you remove the image of God as it stands in them, and you can treat them the same as you would just an object or an idea. And it doesn't really matter how you interact with that person as long as you can see them. In fact, you don't even have to talk to them. He talks about riding on a bus.

And as long as you can in your head imagine all of those people having and bearing the image of God, it changes the world. Not because it changes them, but because it changes you.

And he's writing this in the middle of the 20th century when Nazism is raising raging through Europe. And he wants to make an argument that allows for resistance against the dehumanization of other things. Because I it changes others into things to be used and disposed of at will. And he says this is the door to things like greed and vanity and, and envy and pornography and so much other abuse and dehumanization. And I think we live in an era that is headed toward that same kind of othering because the voices that try to unite us are doing so by making us someone else's common enemy.

And I want you to listen for it when you hear it. When someone is creating a scapegoat, they're not doing it to just objectify that other person. They're doing it so that they can form a posse.

So notice when someone is called less than an image bearer of God, because what follows next is an act of using them for the speaker's own ends. And look, I'm not a prophet or the son of a prophet, but I can nearly guarantee you at some point this year we are going to be othered.

Someone or some group, maybe here in Abilene or in our movement or outside of our movement is going to deny our image of God and the spirit that lives within us to further their own ends of power and glory or perceived self importance. They will call us misguided agents of evil. They will call us lost. They will call us sinful. By the way, on that last one, they're going to be right.

But when they do, I want you to listen closely to what comes next.

What's interesting in this text, on one side it's disciples making boneheaded moves. On the other side it's disciples making boneheaded moves. In the middle it's Jesus saying, whoever not is against us is for us. But on the last of that chapter in this text, he says there's actually some people that don't belong in the kingdom.

It's the ones that look back, the ones that have high aspirations for what they're going to do and what they're going to achieve about how they're going to be a devoted disciple. And then they look at Jesus and say, yeah, but can I wait for my Father to die? It'll be a few more years.

Can I go spend some more time doing the things that I used to do? I mean, conversion is a stage and a process and sometimes you step into it and then out of it and into it and further deeper into it. But Jesus seems to say in this text, like, if you're not going to willing to try to give up everything for the sake of my name, I don't know if you belong.

The enemy is the one who refuses to wholeheartedly embrace the way of Jesus. These are hard words, but I Think more importantly, there are no outsiders when speaking of and living into the kingdom of God. The way of the cross is ever the way of self sacrifice. It's the way of humility. It's the way of being the person who puts their foot in the door so that someone else might come in.

And so when, when this happens, when you see the process of othering, when you see somebody pushing somebody out and naming them something off, I want you to do another test that Jesus recommends, which is examine the fruit.

Because Valerie's family and Azrael's family, they weren't the same as my family religiously. And I have no claim, and I am grateful that I have no ability to claim whether either of those people will be welcomed into the kingdom of God or not. It's not my job. But what I do know is this.

I know that they were my friends.

I know that they cared about me. And I know I saw in their life things like love, joy and peace, patience, kindness, goodness and the rest. I saw those things in them.

And so when somebody says, you're on the outside, we've gone a step too far. We've gone too far out to be included in the circle anymore. This is what I want you to do. I want you to look around this room and I want you to see the fruit of the Spirit being manifest in this place. And then we ask the question, are we serving God with all of our heart, our soul, our mind and our strength?

Would you please stand for our benediction?

Highland. May heaven open every resource on our behalf as we serve God. Another year, may we encounter more people that need grace and love. May we have more opportunity to share our resources and our ability and our talents with those around us. May we invest our time in one another.

And in those least of these, may you be filled with God's spirit and go in peace.