Good Morning. We had
a great service of joy and grace yesterday morning. If you weren’t there with us, please join us
next Sunday as we worship the Lord with hymns and prayers and scripture.
Our readings today continue in Daniel, I John, and the
Gospel of Luke. The three letters of
John focus on love, and today is no different: “And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his
Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who
obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know
that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.”
Some people think
that these “love” instructions are too broad or too unclear to be much help to
us in the pursuit of our faith. Within
the context of the social, political and religious environment in which these
words were written, they are not vague at all.
The writer lived in a world that celebrated materialism, accepted the
virtue of greed, and assumed that the success of one was likely to come at the
failure or defeat of someone else. Sound
familiar? John is telling the Christian
community to “believe in the name of Jesus Christ.” That wasn’t an intellectual act. It is a commitment through which we accept
and affirm with the actions of our lives that the life which Jesus led was
indeed the life that God wants all of us to lead.
There’s a phrase
that sometimes pops up in business when one person beats someone else to a
profit, a promotion, or anything that has a value. I’ve heard it expressed when one person has
quite fully defeated and humiliated another person in a business venture. The phrase is spoken by the “winner:” “Nothing personal! Just business.”
If Christ’s life
teaches us anything it’s that everything that we do to and with one another is
personal. All of life is an integrated
whole. You can’t have one set of rules
for a part of your life (as if it were a game in which destroying someone else
is simply part of the game) and another set of rules for some other part of
your life that involves the exercise of public religion. Jesus came to show us that we can’t
compartmentalize the exercise of our faith from ANY other part of our lives. Either you believe in the name of Jesus or
you don’t. And if you do then you are
acknowledging that everything is personal.
The Pharisees had
managed to compartmentalize their lives so well that for every commandment they
had written 10 or 15 exceptions. Jesus
came to show us that either you love one another, or you don’t. If you abide in the life of Jesus, Jesus’ own
life abides in you. And if the life of
Jesus abides in you then you will love one another.
That doesn’t mean
that we get sentimental or gushy about everyone we meet. It means that we recognize that everyone we
meet is a child of God whom we have been called through Jesus to respect, to
build up if we can, to comfort, to nurture.
In the words and ministry of Jesus we see that He has called us to bring
that love to the ones whom the world has cast aside; the ones whom the world
has called losers!
And we are called
to share that love with one another in the church. It is only when we love and respect one
another, build up one another, pray together that the Spirit of the Lord will
abide within each of us and within our congregation that we are able to show
the world that here is a better way.
Let us pray with
the Psalmist this morning: “Make
me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you
are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.” Fill me with the abiding presence of Your
Spirit. Let me walk in Your ways
always. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Today’s readings are Daniel 4:19-27; 1 John 3:19-4:6; Luke
4:14-30; Psalm 25, 9 & 15.
Blessings.
Pastor Jim
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