This week's sermon explores what it truly means to live in response to God's covenant love. Drawing on the prophet Micah's vivid courtroom scene, the message confronts our instinct to treat faith as a transaction — something we earn through sacrifice, ritual, or good behavior — and instead points to God's own answer: a life shaped by justice, mercy, and humility.
The sermon also turns to the often-overlooked epistle of James, tracing how the early Methodist movement built its identity around the conviction that faith divorced from action is no faith at all. Through stories of John Wesley and the earliest Methodist communities — who organized to visit the sick, educate the poor, and provide health care long before such things were widely accessible — the message reframes holiness not as a private, internal pursuit, but as something only fully realized in community.
At the heart of the sermon is a reflection on what "more" really means. Rather than more busyness, more obligation, or more to carry, the message invites listeners into a deeper kind of more: the Hebrew concept of shalom, understood not merely as inner peace but as practical love woven into the structures of everyday life. Drawing on a meditation from Henri Nouwen, the sermon closes with a simple but searching set of questions about offering peace, extending forgiveness, and choosing love in small, ordinary moments.
Notes:
- The quote about social religion and social holiness comes from Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), Preface, page viii.
- The comment on Micah 6:8 comes from The New Oxford Study Bible (2001), 1332-1333.
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You can read more about Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley's ideas on Shalom and how they intersect with indigenous beliefs at https://godspacelight.com/shalom-and-the-community-of-creation-an-indigenous-vision-part-1/
