On belonging & fried chicken
Comfort food for the broken churches, the breaking Methodists, and our broken, divided, hearts
Gentle reader,
Today, I bring you a guest writer, my husband Brian Felker Jones. Brian preached this sermon in our local congregation on the 6th Sunday after Epiphany. The Spirit used it as balm to my heart, and so I wanted to share it with you. My glosses [are in brackets like these.]
Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 3:1-9
“For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not fleshly and behaving according to human inclinations? 4For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not all too human?
5What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and each will receive wages according to their own labor. 9 For we are God’s coworkers, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.”
Our salvation is not in a pastor, a mentor, [a church, denomination], or a teacher, but in Christ alone; we belong to Christ.
We again come to Pastor Paul’s favorite dysfunctional and toxic church: the Church of Corinth.
Corinth has had wave upon wave of evangelistic missionaries come through. Each missionary has a different style and emphasis. Instead of seeing this as a gift (in revealing the fullness of the gospel), the Corinthians use it for division.
Folks are Paul fans, Apollos fans, fans of someone else. So much so that they bicker and use those allegiances as platforms for power struggles and secret pride.
Not, “I belong to Paul” or “I belong to Apollos.”
Paul reminds the Corinthians they belong to one and one alone: God.
Our salvation is not in a pastor, a mentor, or a teacher, but in Christ alone; we belong to Christ!
We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. Romans 14:7-9
Want to know what most people will say is their favorite part of being a Methodist?
Potlucks.
I’m serious.
I love fried chicken and trying different recipes for it. Most have too much breading, too much seasoning. But last week, I tried this recipe from America’s Test Kitchen, and as I pulled golden chicken out of the oil and then bit in, I had an emotional reaction. This was the perfect fried chicken.
Why is it perfect? Because it tastes exactly like what the church grandmas of my childhood brought to the Methodist potlucks. I thought that taste was gone forever, but I found it again!
There are even songs about Methodist potlucks; one is called “Methodist Pie.” The song is set at a camp meeting, where folks,
“…all go there for to have a good time
And to eat their grub so sly
Have applesauce butter with sugar in the gourd
And a great big Methodist pie.”
Revival breaks out, and the worshipers are transported by the Holy Spirit, while the singer eats the best food and the last of the Methodist pie.
Here’s Grandpa Jones (no relation!) singing it.
As much as I love church potlucks and that perfect fried chicken, the thing I love best about being Methodist might surprise you. It’s this:
We pastors must leave.
The practice began historically as something practical. John Wesley used lay preachers in his growing Methodist movement. There were not enough of them to go around, as the Methodists kept exploding in number. Also, lay preachers often only had five or six sermons written.
So, to kill 2 birds with one stone, Methodism rotated its preachers. When they used up all their sermons, they’d move to the next circuit. This meant the Methodists were always a movement run by the local people of the congregations.
The circuit preacher / drawn by A.R. Waud, Methodist preacher travelling on horseback in rainstorm, Illus. in: Harper's weekly, v. 11, 1867 Oct. 12, p. 641.
Even when I was a kid, the average stay for Methodist pastors was around three years. Preachers had a place, they had a role, but frequent moving prevented them from acquiring power.
Methodism is built to remind us that a preacher is no substitute for the power of our Lord and Redeemer. The power behind the church is the Holy Spirit.
Not a pastor, a District Superintendent, or Bishop. [And not a church, a denomination, or a theological tradition.]
No, they were to be led by the one to whom they belonged, Jesus Christ.
Now I belong to Jesus,
Jesus belongs to me,
Not for the years of time alone,
But for eternity.
Methodists didn’t come up with this idea about pastors and their role. It came from study of scripture, specifically, today’s scripture in which Paul writes, “when one says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ and another, ‘I belong to Apollos,’ are you not all too human? . . . I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Corinthains 3: 4, 6-7).
Baptized Christians should not divide over pastors or tie themselves too closely to a pastor, for both options take us away from the One into whom we were baptized: the Almighty Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Pastors cannot redeem people from sin. Pastors cannot change people. Pastors cannot grow people in God. All these things are for God alone.
Personal photo, “dinner the other night,” 2023.
Our salvation is not in a pastor, a mentor, or a teacher, but in Christ alone; we belong to Christ.
This is a timely topic as we face coming changes for our church. Soon, this July, I will no longer be a pastor here. We are gaining a new pastor, and even our merger vote doesn’t guarantee the pastors will stay longer than a year.
I know this can sound scary, as the unknown almost always does, but here is the good news: you belong to God.
You don’t belong to Brian, to Chris, to Dan, to Carey, to JoAnne, to Jamie, to Jonathan, to Megan, to Chris, to Ed, or even to Bishop Tracy.
[These are names of our local church pastors, both presently and from the recent past, and to say the names is of course to call up images of the people, of the relationships we have with them, of the inevitable fact that each of us liked some more than others, that we’d rather belong to some more than to others…Do feel free to picture your own leaders here…]
. . . you belong to the one who claimed you at baptism, the one who shed blood for you on Calvary, the one who raised you from sin and death, the one who gave you new life . . . that is to whom you belong!
Our salvation is not in a pastor, a mentor, or a teacher, but in Christ alone; we belong to Christ.
The one to whom you belong loves you perfectly and made you wonderfully.
What would it mean to know that you belong to the one God more than to anything or anyone else?
God does not leave us; God does not lead us astray; God does not make false steps, God does not harm us.
Today, in this very hour, God is calling us to belong more fully than we ever have before. Do you hear this call?
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus Christ, my righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
Come, belong to the one who was there before time itself and will be there after time fails. This one waits to bring you into a full and joyous life. Others destroy, divide, or do not save. No other frames will hold, as the old hymn has it.
The one to whom you belong is calling for you now. Heed the call. You belong to Christ.
What is your only comfort in life and in death?
That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—
to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,
and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.
He also watches over me in such a way
that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven;
in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.
Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life
and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
—the Heidelberg Catechism
Grace and Peace,
BFJ
If this piece has been good to you, I’d be grateful if you’d forward, share, and subscribe.
This piece contains associate links.
I grew up in rural Illinois. My godfather, a high school history teacher, was an ordained Methodist pastor and pastored 4 rural churches. First service at 7 AM in Elkhart, drive 25 miles to Ellsworth, etc. as a child I loved spending Sundays with them, going church to church. Often paid in eggs and chicken, and yes, fried chicken. The churches were thrilled to have someone for 2 hours a week who preached, led singing, and then sat with them for an hour, prayed with them over coffee, married their children, and buried their dead. Those churches went decades without a permanent pastor because they loved and cared for each other as a community and had a thriving tiny church without their “own” pastor.
He instilled in them and in me, that church is just one hour but Jesus speaks, guides, “ all the day long”.
Pastor Brian hit it out if the park with this sermon. I was in church the Sunday he delivered it.