20250622 Healing Beyond Belonging¶
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¶
Jab 1 - Why don't my friends want to come to church?¶
For most of my life I have asked this question: Why don’t my friends want to come to church?
It deeply upsets me—not that a specific friend or family member doesn't want to come—but that there’s a widespread aversion to church. I love church. It is beautiful, it is my community, it is my source of meaning and grace. It is where I learn how to live and love and let go. I don’t know how people live without it, to be honest.
And yet, my friends, the people I care about most, often want nothing to do with it.
Over the years, I’ve become more aware of an uncomfortable truth: 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’s history is marked by both deep compassion and deep contradiction. On one hand, it has birthed hospitals, fed the hungry, sheltered the homeless, and led movements of reconciliation and justice. It has taught forgiveness, compassion, and love for enemies.
And yet, the same faith has also been used to justify colonisation, the Crusades, apartheid, the suppression of women, the silencing of indigenous wisdom, and violence in the name of salvation.
The church has done incredible good and terrible harm—sometimes with the same Bible in hand.
That tension lives in our legacy. And I think it lives in our witness today.
Jab 3 - What was Jesus actually doing?¶
We are Christians, we follow Christ, how did Christ live?
Did he come to make Christians? Or did he come to heal? Did he spend his time drawing lines between insiders and outsiders? Or to break those lines apart? We say Jesus came to save, to reveal God, to bring God’s kingdom. But what did that actually look like in practice?
What did he spend his time doing?
Over and over again, it looked like this: Teaching people how to live. Healing those who were sick, shamed, or cast out. His mission wasn’t tribal. It was transformational.
Today’s sermon is an exploration at the edge of my own understanding so some of this may be debatable—but I think that’s okay. What’s important is that it’s been put on my heart to ask this question with you:
Why does the church not feel as compelling to my friends as it does to me?
And maybe you can help me shape and think about this as well.
Right Hook - Serving without an Agenda¶
What did Paul say about identity? And how did Jesus engage with outsiders in regions like the Decapolis? Let’s look to the readings for some insight.
Explanation¶
Teaching Point 1 - Galatians — No Jew or Greek, Slave or Free¶
Our Galatians reading today comes at the end of a three-chapter introduction to Paul’s letter — and Paul is in full force, wrestling with a tension that divided the early church: law versus faith.
Paul's ministry was primarily to the Gentiles — the outsiders. His gospel was about radical freedom in Christ. He wanted to teach people how to live a full life of love with God, and he challenged Peter and the others on their insistence that Gentile believers adopt Jewish customs.
Paul doesn’t reject the law. He honours it. But he insists that the life Christ calls us to goes beyond it. The law reveals our need — our sin, our limits, our dependence. It shows us our need for trust and surrender in God. But the law was never the point. It was a signpost, not the destination.
God sees us as good, honourable, valuable — not because of what we’ve done, but because we’ve trusted Him. “We are justified through faith, not by works!” Paul repeats this again and again. It’s one of his deepest themes — and it got him into trouble.
In chapter 2, Paul recalls how the church questioned the choices of his friend Titus — a Greek — who was not circumcised. Circumcision wasn’t just tradition. It was identity. Paul even clashes with Peter for withdrawing from Gentiles to align with “the circumcision group.” Paul saw this as a betrayal of the gospel.
So Paul says no — something has changed.
Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion, but to tear religious walls down. Paul says in Galatians 5:6:
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”
And again in 3:28:
“There is no longer Jew or Greek… for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
But too often, the church has spotlighted conversion over healing — expecting people not just to trust Jesus, but to adopt a culture.
I believe my friends long for healing, for grace, for truth — just like I do.
But what if we’ve buried that grace under layers of expectation?
What if we’ve made it too hard to enter the family of God — not theologically, but culturally?
What if people aren’t rejecting Jesus…
They’re just not recognising him beneath the layers we’ve added?
Teaching Point 2 – Luke: Healing in the Decapolis¶
Our Gospel reading takes us far from Jerusalem — to the Decapolis, a Gentile region steeped in other gods, customs, and politics. It’s a place that would have made any good Jew feel out of place.
And it’s exactly where Jesus goes.
There, he meets a man in agony — a man possessed, exiled, chained up by his own community. A man who is, in every way, an outsider: spiritually, socially, and physically.
And Jesus heals him. He restores him to dignity and peace.
But the part that always surprises me is what comes next.
The man, now free, begs to follow Jesus. And Jesus says... no.
“Return to your home,” he says, “and declare how much God has done for you.”
Jesus doesn’t pull him into a new group. He doesn’t say, “Come and become like us.” He says, “Stay with your people. Be a witness right where you are.”
That’s powerful.
It tells us that healing doesn’t require cultural conversion. Belonging to Jesus doesn’t require joining a religious in-group. It simply requires trust, and a willingness to go and speak of what God has done.
This man becomes the first evangelist to the Gentile world — and he never becomes a “Christian” as we might define it. He doesn’t change his clothes, his culture, or his hometown. But he is changed.
And that brings me back to the question I’ve been asking:
Why doesn’t the church feel compelling to so many of my friends?
Maybe it’s because we’ve forgotten the freedom Jesus models here — the freedom to be healed without needing to become like us.
Maybe we’ve emphasized belonging to the church more than being sent by Jesus.
Maybe we’ve told people they need to join our group, when Jesus might be saying, “Stay where you are — and tell the story of what God has done in you.”
Application¶
This actually gives me relief.
If what Jesus and Paul are showing us is true, then I can stop pretending it’s my job to fix the world. I can stop performing my faith like it’s a sales pitch. I can stop measuring my worth by how many people I’ve converted or convinced. Because we don’t get into heaven by “saving” twenty people. We experience heaven — here and now — when we live lives of deep trust, open service, and healing love. When we move across boundaries and offer ourselves. When we live not as gatekeepers, but as witnesses, sharing with others what God is doing in the world.
So how do we live like that? How can I live that my faith sets the people around me free rather than bind them?
For me, it comes down to three modes of being. Postures that shift the focus off ourselves and onto what God is already doing.
Action 1 - Surrender¶
This is the starting place.
Let go of the need to control the outcome.
Let go of the belief that it’s your job to make everything right.
Trust that God is already at work in the world — even beyond your sight, even in places that feel far from you.
Surrender doesn’t mean giving up.
It means opening up.
It means loosening your grip on your need to be right, to be praised, to be in charge of how others encounter God.
It’s a quiet prayer that says:
God, I don’t have all the answers. But I trust you’re already moving. Let me join you, not replace you.
That’s surrender.
Not control. Not coercion.
Just trust.
That's the beginning of freedom.
Action 2 - Serve¶
Once we surrender our grip on the outcome, we can step into the real work of the church: service.
But not the kind of service that’s about fixing people.
Not the kind that sees others as projects.
Not the kind that secretly hopes to change them into someone more like us.
No — real service looks like presence.
It looks like listening.
It looks like bringing soup, holding hands, sharing tears, sharing joy.
It looks like taking the lower seat, not the higher one.
Because Jesus didn’t come to be served. He came to serve.
He entered spaces no one else wanted to go.
He met people on their terms, not his.
That’s our call too.
We don’t serve to convert.
We serve because love can’t sit still.
Action 3 - Let healing flow¶
This is the fruit of the first two.
When we surrender and when we serve, something begins to happen.
It’s not flashy. It’s not instant. But it’s real.
Healing starts to flow.
Not because we planned it perfectly.
Not because we built a strategy.
But because love, trust, and service always open space for the Spirit to move.
Sometimes healing is visible — relationships mended, wounds tended, hope rekindled.
Other times it’s quiet and internal — a shift in someone’s heart, a softening, a breath of peace in the middle of pain.
But healing flows when we stop trying to prove something, and just start being present in love.
One Liner¶
Enter one liner here