I want to start today on our notions about history.  Most of the time we like to speak in broad generalizations.  That can get us into trouble because that is not accurate history.  History has nothing to teach us about how we might be living today.  If you were to look in the late 1700's in this country, you would discover a fairly pagan place.  A lot
of people did not go to church.  When a French historian who happened to be traveling through America went from town to town, he found a lot of debauchery. 

As we look at America in the early years of this nation, we notice that most people had come from Europe.  If our ancestors had been kings or queens, they would have never left there.  Most of the people who came to this country came because they were the outcasts of society.  In many ways this continent became the overflow of the dregs
of that society.  When I say “dregs”, I don't always mean criminals, but they are included.  They were people who had different religious beliefs than the state religions.  They were poor people who did not have the wherewithal to make it in their home country.  They came to this continent and they pushed themselves westward.  Once an area was settled, our ancestors pushed until they finally arrived at the west coast. They discovered that by their own initiative and a little bit of help from the land that was available, they could create a new life.

Into that mix came evangelical Christianity.  I'm going to tell you the Methodist version of the story because we happen to be in a Methodist church, but the other big factor was the Baptist element.  I will let the Baptist preacher preach about that sometime.  John Wesley sent young men over to this country to be what he referred to as circuit riders.  Most of them rode horses and had circuits that took about a month to complete.  They were faced with all kinds of inclement weather.  In the early years John Wesley forbid them to marry. Not because he had some priestly notion of celibacy, but because the vast majority of these young circuit riders would die within three or four years because of the harsh conditions to which they were exposed.  When was the last time someone asked you to live your faith in that kind of committed way?

This historic period in our history was known as the Great Awakening during which people discovered faith and shaped our country in some incredible ways.  You can see it in tangible ways as they kept moving from place to place, giving names to the towns they established.  Names like Salem, which is the Hebrew for peace.  Places like Bethlehem, a name chosen by a group of Moravians who settled that city and saw in that name an opportunity to be reminded of God coming into this world. As you travel across the county you see names like Pisca and Mt. Olivet.  These names are scattered all over this country because they reflect a time in the lives of Americans in which the stories of the Bible were not simply read, they were lived.  Religious faith was the central and most important element in peoples' lives.

Books were very expensive one hundred years ago.  Most people didn't own books and, if they did, they probably owned two.  One was Pilgrim’s Progress and the other one was the Bible.  Pilgrim’s Progress was a story of a faith journey and was based on the Christian faith.  The irony is that some people couldn't read the Bible even if they had it.  But they could begin with Genesis and go all the way through the book of Revelation and tell you every major story in sequence.  They just didn't go to church on Sunday and let that be their religion for the week. They read the Bible in their homes. They told stories to their children.

Something happened about 1900.  First of all, we became much more sophisticated as a culture.  Much more educated.  And second, because of the new scientific way of looking at life, we moved into a modern age in which we began to differentiate between the various aspects of our lives.  Before that time work, home, family and community were one and the same.  Then suddenly there was a separation between where people lived, where they worked, and where they found their friends.  Another piece of that was where they went to worship once a week.  The heart and the mind and the body were seen as three separate things.  It was during this period that medicine removed any spiritual element and just looked at the body.  It is interesting that was we move into a post modern age, we discover that there had been a spiritual vacuum in the world of the
past one hundred years.  When we dissect our lives into separate categories, we are much the poorer.

We are reminded as Christians this morning that the central element in our lives is the sacred text from which our faith as come.  It is not just one of many options in our lives, but it is the central part of life.  We do not simply read the Bible with our mind, but we read the Bible with our hearts as well.  The crux of the Christian faith is that the word became flesh and welcomed us.  Two thousand years ago people saw God as a distant power that they had to sacrifice to so that they might somehow make it through life.  What Jesus brought to this world was the revolutionary concept that God was not a remote God, but that He was immediate in our lives.  If we know Jesus, we know God.  Jesus' life of healing and preaching and teaching reminds us of how much God
loves us.  The story continues with his suffering, his death and his willingness to give himself totally that we might have a new life.

I would remind you that part of that story says something about taking up your cross and following him.  Too many Christians read that and assume that "my cross to bear" is the arthritis in my knee; my own personal problems.  The text does not mean that.  It means to take the suffering of the world on our shoulders.  Do you see that the work, the living work, is more than just reading something and reflecting on it in our minds?  What our American ancestors realized is that it should shape everything that we are and everything that we are about and it should be the central loyalty of everything that we are.  So, what is your homework?  It is to be reminded of what they were reminded of.  The Bible should be the vital part of every day of your life.  I want to encourage you not to simply read the Bible, but to pray the Bible.  As you pray the Bible, God can literally speak to you.  As you read those stories, read them like you would any family story that you know and cherish.  Go and live your life as a story of faith in this community.