20250622¶
Welcome¶
Good morning, my name is Clifton Bartholomew, and I am a local preacher here at UMC.
It is always so good to share with you all. Welcome again to any visitors and to all our online guests as well.
I always like to say before I preach that I am a teacher by training and so I am very used to being interrupted. If anyone is brave enough to raise their hand and ask a question or give an input, it is warmly welcomed.
Introduction (700 words)¶
Jab 1 - Friends at Church¶
Introduction: Why don’t my friends want to come to church?
I’ve wrestled with this question for most of my life.
I find church beautiful. I find community here. I find meaning here. I find grace here. And yet, so many of the people I care about most want nothing to do with it. They look at the church and say, "No, thank you."
And for a long time, I couldn't understand why.
But over the years, I’ve started to realise something uncomfortable: maybe the church has often put more focus on conversion than on healing. We’ve spent a lot of energy asking people to change sides, rather than asking how we can be part of restoring what is broken.
And I think people can feel that.
Jab 2 - The Beautiful and the Ugly¶
Christianity has done beautiful things—and terrible things. It has birthed hospitals, fed the hungry, and led movements of reconciliation. But it has also justified slavery, colonised nations, and silenced difference in God’s name.
Maybe it’s because we’ve confused belonging to our group with being part of God’s healing. We thought getting people to think like us was the mission. But maybe the mission was always love.
Jab 3 - Jesus Came to Heal¶
Jesus came to bring about God's kingdom.
Teaching and healing. Teaching us how to live, healing the downtrodden, sick and outcast.
Right Hook - Serving without an Agenda¶
Explanation (700 words)¶
What does scripture reveal about the problem? Don't answer the questions. Tension.
Teaching Point 1 - Galatians — No Jew or Greek, Slave or Free¶
In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he writes something radical:
"There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
This isn’t about sameness. It’s about freedom from the walls we build. In Paul’s time, those categories were everything. They determined your worth, your rights, your place. But Paul says: in Christ, those walls come down. And if those walls come down, then group membership can no longer be the way we measure holiness.
Teaching Point 2 - Luke — Healing in the Decapolis¶
In Luke, Jesus goes to the Decapolis—Gentile territory. Other gods. Other customs. Other politics. And there, in that strange, uncomfortable place, he meets a man in agony.
A man possessed.
A man silenced by his own pain.
A man the community had chained up and abandoned.
And Jesus heals him. He frees him. And then—this is key—when the man asks to follow Jesus, Jesus says no.
"Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you."
Jesus doesn’t pull him into the "right" group. He sends him back into his own culture, his own people, as a witness. The healing was real. The transformation was real. But it didn’t require a change of team. It required a return home.
Teaching Point 3 - God Is Not Christian¶
This is the hard but liberating truth: God is not Christian.
God is not limited to the church. God is not confined to our group. God is healer, liberator, love.
That means healing can happen outside our boundaries. And if that makes us uncomfortable, it might be because we’ve confused God’s movement with our membership.
Application (700 words)¶
Mini-Transition: How Do We Respond?
So how do we respond to this?
How do we live in this tension—knowing the harm done in the name of our faith, knowing the hurt still present in the world, and feeling unsure of what exactly to do?
I wrestle with this question all the time. Especially as a white South African.
How can I bring healing from the injustices of apartheid?
How do I, as a well-off person in a country of deep inequality, bring healing to a society still marked by division and trauma?
I don’t have clean answers. But I’m learning that we don’t need perfect strategies to begin the work.
We need a way of being. A posture. A mode.
And for me, that mode is:
Action 1 - Surrender¶
Let go of the need to control outcomes. Trust that God is already at work in the world—even beyond us. Surrender doesn’t mean giving up. It means opening up. Releasing the illusion that healing must come from our strength, or our side.
Action 2 - Serve¶
Show up in love. Not to fix people, but to walk with them. Not to convert, but to comfort. Service is how we participate in healing without pretending to own it. It’s how we join God’s work, not replace it.
Action 3 - Heal¶
Not as an achievement, but as a posture of hope. Healing comes when we surrender and serve. Slowly, quietly, sometimes invisibly. But it comes. Not because we planned it perfectly, but because we trusted and loved deeply.
So I invite you today:
Don’t try to solve the world.
Don’t carry the guilt of fixing everything.
Don’t retreat into comfort because it’s all too complex.
Instead:
Surrender. Serve. And trust that healing will follow.
You don’t need to belong to the "right" group to be part of God’s movement.
You just need to be open.
Because God is already on the move.
Even in Decapolis.
Even through you.
Even now.
Amen.
One Liner¶
Enter one liner here