Sermon for the Nativity of John the Baptist

Preached at Canadochly and Grace on June 24, 2018
Preaching text: Malachi 3:1-4

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver...

Imagine for a moment that you are a hunk of metal ore. You are a rock that some miner has dug out of the ground and has taken to a smith. That smith has then placed you into a furnace, into intense heat. The fire is burning and melting you and the parts of you that are impure and unwanted are being melted away, leaving behind only the pure metal the smith desires: the iron, the gold, the silver; what he wants is kept, what he does not need is discarded.

It’s a violent process, when you think about it. If rocks could feel, one could almost say it was painful or unpleasant as this ore is taken and transformed from one form into another. Rocks, of course, cannot feel, but people can and that’s a big part of what makes this metaphor from Malachi so powerful. As God transforms his people through the work and word of his prophets, they are going to find things a little hot, a little uncomfortable, maybe even a bit painful.

Certainly, that was the experience of our person-of-the-day and those who encountered him. Today is the Nativity of John the Baptist, placed here because we are precisely six months from Christmas Eve and Evangelist Luke tells us that the Baptizer was born six months prior to the Christ. Luke also tells us they were cousins, and we can guess that they knew each other, perhaps even grew up together. And through them, of course, God set out to change the world, but in very different ways with each man.

Isaiah’s prophecy of the “voice crying out in the wilderness” is the one associated with John and his work. As an adult, he is a controversial figure, wandering around the desert dressed like some crazy barbarian, claiming that God is doing a new thing, and that the people should repent and make ready for it. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. And how does one do this? By changing the way you live your life. Moving from selfishness to selflessness, from greed to generosity, from apathy to compassion. He does not pull his punches with those who benefit from the status quo, calling out the religious and political authorities of his time: You brood of vipers! He is blunt and bold, harsh but truthful. He is not a man most of us would like. He’s a firebrand, a troublemaker, a meddler. And God is using him to burn away the injustice and immorality of his people.

But the people, as we know from the story, are not interested in having their injustice and immorality burned away and, in the end, it is John who pays the price for their lack of vision. Jesus comes along with a much gentler approach later, but essentially calling for the same thing, a new world of justice, peace, and mercy, and they kill him too. Change is the most dangerous thing to ask of people and yet it also always one of the most necessary.

If we fast forward to today, we see this same dynamic at play. So much of what defines our life and times is the change of our world and the ways in which we humans are fighting tooth and nail against it. Take the Middle East for instance. Why do groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda exist?
Because the Muslim world is changing. It’s encounter with the more advanced more affluent secular West is transforming it. And many are seeing their livelihoods threatened by economic forces outside their control (globalization, mechanization, etc.) They’re seeing their traditional social privileges challenged as women gain more rights and privileges. They see Western powers, such as the United States, as taking away everything they hold dear and so they feel compelled to fight back. But the truth that they don’t want to admit is that change is coming to their world and they are not going to be able to stop it.

That should sound familiar, because it’s also happening here. We here in the West are also experiencing rapid change. People are seeing their livelihoods threatened by economic forces outside their control (globalization, mechanization, etc.) They’re seeing their traditional social privileges challenged as women, people of color, LGBT folk, and those of other religions gain more rights and privileges. Many of them blame the forces of liberalism as taking away everything they hold dear and so they feel compelled to fight back. Mind you, while we have seen violence as a result of this (Many mass shootings, Charlottesville), it’s nowhere near the level of terrorism ISIS inflicts on its fellow Muslims (yet), but the dynamic is very much the same. The truth that we don’t want to admit is that change is coming to our world and we are not going to be able to stop it.

One of the most fundamental and often-unspoken teachings of our faith is simply that God knows best. We have spent the millennia of human existence pretending otherwise. When God sends a prophet to remind us of what we’ve been taught, we resent them, often silence or discredit them, and, if need be, we kill them. We don’t want to change from our sinful and evil ways. We like being evil and with good reason. It feels good to hate; there’s an adrenaline rush that goes with it. It gives us power. It feels good to have money and get stuff, even if we take it by dishonest means; it lets us lie to ourselves about how successful and important we are. It gives us power. And we like feeling powerful. It’s our first sin. Eat this and you will be like God. You will be powerful and the world will be yours. And ever since, we have been trying to prove that lie true in whatever way we can.

But God’s way really is better. Love instead of hate. Generosity instead of greed. Compassion and mercy instead of cruelty and apathy. A world where people of all color, creed, language, tribal origin, gender, sexuality, age, and everything else that we so often use to divide ourselves one from another can come together as brothers and sisters. United as children of the same Creator, united as brothers and sisters of the same Redeemer, united as recipients of the same Spirit. That is God’s vision of the world, God’s dream, God’s desire. And he keeps calling us back to it again and again and again. Who is it this time who brings this word to us? Is it Isaiah or Elijah? Is it John the Baptizer? Is it MLK Jr? Is it Malala Yousafzai? The names change as the generations pass but their purpose, even if they don’t fully understand it, is the same. To bring this world closer to what God envisions.

What about us? My friends, this world is for us. Christ came and died and rose again to ensure we would be a part of this new world. I know there are many in the Church who do not like what is happening in our world. I know there are many in the Church who are afraid of change, who find the refiners fire too painful. But the simple truth of your existence has not changed. You are beloved, you are precious, and you would not be left behind in a world of God’s true justice. Your excess may be burned away, but the person you are meant to be in the world that means to create will remain. Do not fear it. Trust that God does indeed know best. Amen.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly and Grace on June 17, 2018
Preaching text: Mark 4:26-34

This was a hard week for me. Coming on the cusp of last week, with the sudden and heartbreaking death of Randy Wilhide at Grace, this week continued with more pain and unpleasant experiences. On Tuesday, I discovered that the daughter-in-law of one of my fellow pastors had committed suicide. As a pastor who has done funerals for both suicides and family members (thankfully, not both at the same time), I tried to give input as best I could to help her through what she's facing in the days ahead.

On Wednesday, I got the rather abrupt and unexpected news that one of my friends had ended his multi-year relationship with his girlfriend and then decided to impulsively drop everything else in his life that mattered to him as well. If you know anything about mental or behavioral health, you know that's a big red flag, so I was scared. Thankfully, I think we're out of the woods for now, but it was a tense few days.

We keep hearing stories like this. We hear about the opioid crisis and parents overdosing with their children in the back seat of the car. We've been hearing about celebrities, people with an abundance of wealth and fame, who have been committing suicide. It feels like there's an overarching malaise in our society right now. It makes it feel like good news is really bad news and bad news is even worse. But it’s also not just what we see on TV or read on the internet. It’s in our lives. It’s in the lives of our friends and families. It’s in our own hearts and minds. I know addicts, some recovering, some not.  I know people struggling with depression and suicide. It feels like it's everywhere. Something is very wrong with the world today.

Another of my colleagues and I met for lunch on Wednesday and we talked at great length about this very topic. He sees it. He sees it in his people. He feels it within himself. He asked me my thoughts and I told him much of what I’ve observed about life in these times, observations that I have often shared with you from these pulpits. I said the biggest problem in our world today is that nobody cares. Apathy has become a poison within us. We argue back and forth between “black lives matter” and “all lives matter,” when what people are really feeling is that NO LIVES MATTER.

It used to be in the business world that managers and MBAs were taught that your greatest asset was your people, your employees. Nurture, support, and cultivate them and your business has a great shot at success and profit. You still see some of this from people like Richard Branson, one of the richest CEOs in the world, when he famously said “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. Because if you take care of the employee, they’ll take care of the client.” Now, to me, that sounds like someone I’d want to work for. But that’s rare in the modern corporate world. No, today, employees are disposable assets. They’re liabilities. They’re seen as getting in the way of making more money. They don’t matter.

Our government is supposed to be “Of the people, By the people, For the people.” But when was the last time that was true? With Citizens United and unlimited spending on political campaigns, it very much feels like our leaders (from both parties) are bought and paid-for extensions of the rich and powerful. It’s not what we want. It’s what they want. And they get what they want and we don’t. We, the average voter, no longer matter.

Even here in the church, people are often viewed only by what they can give to us. As membership slumps and coffers dry up, evangelism becomes less and less about proclaiming the kingdom and more and more about bodies in pews. The charlatans in our midst do nothing to help that perception, with calls for more money to buy private jets or build stadium churches, all the while the hungry go unfed and the poor are ignored. People are just cogs in the wheel. They do not matter.

And yet we contrast all that against the teachings of Jesus. He who commanded us to love one another, to love even our enemies, to love our neighbors as ourselves. To give all that we can for the sake of others. A man who was the living incarnation of a loving God who came into this world to show us what it looks like when all lives DO MATTER.

I am increasingly convinced that this is the struggle of our time. When we stand against sexism or racism or homophobia or any other form of bigotry, what we are standing against is a world that says to people of those realities that they don’t matter. But they do. They matter to God and they should matter to us. But it’s not just the frequently disenfranchised minorities of race, gender, sexuality, and religion that feel left behind. It’s really everyone. Black, white, gay, straight, men, women, young, old. As the recent celebrity suicides imply, even the privileged among us don’t always feel that way in this reality.

But how do we fix this? It’s easy to identify the problem. Harder to solve it. In that regard, I feel that Jesus’ teaching today is very helpful. It’s really his approach to any of the great macro problems the world faces, whether it be hunger, poverty, or spreading the Kingdom as far and wide as possible.

You see, if we look at this problem via the big picture, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and discouraged. We can’t save the world. We’re just one little church in York county. But that’s not the approach Jesus is suggesting. His parables of planting seeds show us that it is the smallest of gestures that gets things going. It’s doing what we can, right now, for the neighbors right before us. The kindness we can plant in one another. The love and support we can share with each other and with those we encounter in our day to day. We can show people that they matter to us.

This is true evangelism. This is spreading the kingdom, one planted seed, one kindness, one person, at a time. This is what’s missing from our world. We have a plague of apathy where people’s lives have no meaning and they do not matter. We counter that by showing people they do matter, because they matter to God, and we show them they matter to God by showing them they matter to us. Your life matters. My life matters. The person sitting next to you, their life matters. All lives matter, black, white, immigrant, native, gay, straight, young, old, rich, poor, Christian, non-Christian, men, women. All means all.

Jesus did not come into this world to save only a part of it. John’s Gospel, really all the Gospels are very clear that he came for the whole world. God sent him to save everyone. That only becomes real when we, as the Church, make it real for people. Plant seeds. Save the world. Make people know they matter. Amen.

(Pastor's note: If you know someone struggling with addiction or suicidal thoughts, one of the greatest kindnesses you can show to them is to get them professional help. Being "nice" when someone is battling such demons is far from enough. People do matter and they matter enough that sometimes we have to make the hard choice to do more than simply saying we care, but actually doing what needs to be done to get them the help they need.)

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Grace and Canadochly on June 10, 2018
Scripture Readings: Genesis 3:8-15, Mark 3:20-35

Some years ago, in an effort to rebrand themselves, a lot of Christian groups and businesses began to refer to themselves as “family” organizations. You have “Focus on the Family.” You have the FRC, the “Family Research Council.” You had (and maybe still have) Zondervan Family Bookstores. It was a way to say “Christian” (specifically conservative evangelical Christian) without all the baggage that often goes with that.

This was a reaction to changes in our society that have taken place over the past 60-70 years. It’s no secret to most of us that these groups’ interpretation of the word “family” is rather traditional and narrow. Husband, wife, 2.5 kids, various house pets, all living in a nice suburban (re: white) neighborhood. But that’s the very definition of family that’s been so challenged by the changes in our world. Now, families look like all kinds of different things. You have interracial couples. Parents with children adopted from other countries. Single parents. Cohabitating couples who aren’t married. LGBT couples with kids. Multigenerational families, with grandparents and grandchildren and everything in between under one roof.

I remember when our entertainment began to reflect these changes. One of my favorite TV shows as a kid was Different Strokes. An older white man, a widower, raising two orphaned black boys. The Jeffersons had neighbors who were an interracial couple. One Day at a Time was a divorced woman raising two daughters. Punky Brewster was an old widower raising a young girl. All different configurations being seen on the TV in the late 70s and early 80s. And this is part of what our more conservative brethren were so aghast at, because it was different. It wasn’t the tradition. It wasn’t what they thought was right.

I wonder then what they would think of Jesus’ definition of family.

Human beings are essentially tribal. We create social groups based around common needs and interests as well as other similarities. We are Americans. We are Christians. We are white folk. We live in Central PA, York county. Those are our tribes and they often overlap with one another. One tribe to which we all belong is our own family. I’m a Schwarz. I’m the descendant of Schwarz’s and Faulstichs and Morris’s and Whitakers. That’s my family tribe. That’s who I am.

None of that is wrong in and of itself. In fact, anthropologists would probably argue that without that unity that tribal identity creates, the human race would not have survived long. We work together. We help each other out. That’s the good thing about a tribe.

But there is a bad thing too. When two tribes meet, one of two things happens. They either unite and form a greater whole or they fight and try to destroy one another. Our impulse, in large part because of our sin, is the latter.

The ancient storytellers who put together the story we know from Genesis as the “Fall” understood this. They also understood that it was wrong. Eve has taken the apple from the tree, persuaded by the serpent that it would grant her her greatest desire, eaten it, and given it to Adam to also eat. This was not a trick as we’ve so often been taught. Adam and Eve knew exactly what they wanted; they wanted to be like God so they ate readily and eagerly. Their ambition was their downfall and the effects of it are seen immediately.

God comes into their midst and asks what is going on. The very first words out of Adam’s mouth are blame. “The woman YOU gave to me gave me some and I ate.” The very first words out of Eve’s mouth are blame. “The serpent tricked me and I ate.” It’s your fault. It’s her fault. It’s the serpent’s fault. It’s NEVER my fault. And because of this blaming, human relationship has been broken ever since. Tribe vs. tribe. Nation vs. nation. Family vs. family.

And we see that today. White vs. black. Gay vs. straight. Men vs. women. Americans vs. foreigners. Christians vs. Muslims/atheists/Jews/etc. Conservatives vs. liberals. Rich vs. poor. And it seems to be getting more and more hostile by the minute. Tribe vs. tribe. Nation vs. nation. Family vs. family. All one big powder keg ready to blow.

And yet none of it is new. We humans have been like this for forever. Wars, genocides, slaughter on mass scale has been our legacy throughout the generations. Nowhere do you see the impact of sin more than in our never ending desire to murder one another. And over what? You talk different. Your skin color is different. You live in a different part of the world. You love the wrong kind of people. What stupid reasons.

Jesus’ day was no different. It was Romans vs. Jews. Rich vs. poor. Pharisees vs. Sadducees. Jews vs. Samaritans. Romans vs. Parthians. The lines were drawn all over the place. Everybody hating everybody else.

But as we are so often reminded, Jesus came for the sake of the whole world. He was not here to rescue one part of humanity and not another. No, he came for EVERYONE. All tribes, all languages, all nations, all families. In fact, I find it most interesting that the covenant given to Abraham in ancient days, the one that Jesus fulfilled, was a promise from God to “bless all the FAMILIES of the earth.” Somehow, I don’t think that language was unintentional.

Thus, when the question of family is put to Jesus, he turns it on its head, aligning family not with tribe or origin, but with God’s universal love. Who is my family but those who do the will of my father? They are my true family. Jesus’ goal is clear. He’s trying to redefine family, redefine the tribe, to be all of God’s children.

Who is our family? Yes, those bound to us by blood and adoption. But not them alone. No, our brothers and sisters are here in our midst. And they are out there on the streets of this city, this country, this world. For we are all children of God. These divisions between us are of our own making, the result of sin making us distrust and dislike one another. But that’s not the way it’s meant to be. Christ came to make us one, united in the love of a God who sent his son into this world to die and rise again. That’s how far his love goes for his children. And we are called to love like that as well. Can we? If we can, if we can see all of humanity as one big tribe, one big family, then just maybe we can stop the bloodshed and make a better world. Amen.

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly and Grace on June 3, 2018
Preaching text: Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Mark 2:23-3:6

Throughout the course of human history, most people have tried to live moral upright ethical lives. Most people strive to be good, to live in harmony with others, to do what is right for themselves, their society, their families, and their nation. Now, over the course of centuries and millennia, many debates have erupted across myriad societies as to precisely how to live out that sense of morality. The devil (or perhaps angel in this case) is in the details, as they say.

In my own observations, I’ve noticed there are generally two schools of thought in regards to morality. One is what I call the self-improvement model. The focus here is inward. It’s on what I do for myself. How can I become a better person. What behaviors can I embrace to make myself better? What sort of behavior should I avoid? This has been a popular position for more conservative branches of religions. I become more morally upright by avoiding sex, strong drink, profanity, obeying the “thou shalt nots” of my faith tradition, etc.

The second school is more of a outward model. The focus is on the other. It’s on what I can do for other people or the wider word. How can I make the world better for someone or for everyone? What should I do about society’s sins? Racism, sexism, the opioid crisis, the refugee situation, LGBT issues, etc. How can I best help feed the hungry, clothe the naked, minister to the poor? This is often the position of more progressive branches of faith traditions such as our own.

It’s probably not hard to guess which side of the debate I fall on, but the truth of the matter is there is more overlap between them than we often give them credit. One may refrain from using profanity in an effort to avoid causing hurt and offense in their neighbor. One can see aiding refugees as a mechanism for self-improvement. Examples of this are more numerous than can be mentioned here, but the line between these two models is often more blurry than we often admit. Each of us, in our own piety and morality, often practice both models.

Where we often get into trouble are the times when we ignore one side to focus exclusively on the other. Those times when we are not a mix, but completely one sided. And that is pretty much precisely what was happening in the times of Jesus.

In Christian circles, we often see the Pharisees as the villains of the story. It was they who conspired to have Jesus “destroyed” (to use the language of our Gospel text today) It was they who challenged Jesus at every turn. But once again, the truth is more blurry than we often make it. The Pharisees were the progressives, the liberals, the change agents of their day. They were the cutting edge of religious thought in the first century. Modern Judaism owes the Pharisees an immense debt.

So what was going on? How did these people who should have been allies (and on occasions were) end up as such bitter rivals? The problem was not that the Pharisees were wrong and Jesus was right. The problem was that the Pharisees were too narrow-minded to understand that there was more to morality than what they practiced. They were stuck on one side of the divide and could not and would not concede that the other side had a valid position.

Thus, when Jesus heals on the Sabbath or his disciples snack on grain they’ve plucked from the fields on the Sabbath, conflicts erupt because the Pharisees cannot imagine that “good” can exist outside their narrow viewpoint.

But lest we pick on the Pharisees unfairly, this narrow minded perspective is often precisely what the Church today often does. We are just as guilty as they are.

One of the most extreme examples of this is a story my late grandfather once told me. During the Depression, he was worshipping when a poor family came into the church. The pastor stopped the service to throw the poor family out because they weren’t “dressed properly.” I heard echoes of that when I was growing up when people would fuss about teenagers wearing sneakers under their acolyte robes.

We also hear echoes of it when we gossip about the LGBT person in our midst, or the divorced, or the addict, or the teenage mother. How dare those “sinners” come among us? I also remember an echo of it when one of the professors at the local college got up to read at worship in my home church and people were astonished that she could read because she was black.

When rules, official or unofficial, matter more than people than we are the new Pharisees and we have become as narrow-minded as those who once conspired to crucify our Lord.

Jesus challenges this perpetually throughout his earthly ministry. Mind you, Jesus was not rejecting a self-improvement morality. He was a person who was fastidious about his behavior, as were his disciples. But he never let that get in the way of helping someone in need.

For Jesus, a rule, whether it be from society, from tradition, or even from the Scriptures, that got in his way of loving someone, caring for someone, helping someone, that rule was discarded for the time being. It was suspended, often only temporarily, so that he could do what was truly right for that person. Jesus did not willy-nilly break the Sabbath, but he did do it when he found someone who needed his help.

Today, Jesus is still calling us to challenge the mindset that rules matter more than people. We have lots of rules in society. We have civil and criminal laws on the books. Our congregations are organized by constitution. We have social expectations based upon our culture, our family, our class, our education. None of those things are bad in and of themselves. But there’s a whole world out there full of people God has called us to help, that God has called us to love. As Jesus, he loved them even when it ran the risk of the ultimate penalty and even as they drove in the nails he continued to love them by declaring “Father, forgive them.” That’s our model, folks. Jesus did what he did not simply to help the immediate needs in his midst, but to inform the future Church how they were to behave towards neighbor.

People matter more than rules. The Church is not doing a very good job of this. For instance, there was a recent survey released that showed which groups most support and more oppose refugee programs in our country. That group that wants to help refugees, who are people in desperate need, fleeing tyranny and terrorism in their home countries, the group that wants to help them the least are Christians. Why? Got me, but there is seriously something wrong here.

That’s hardly the only example. At synod assembly this week, I attended a workshop on doing ministry “beyond our walls.” One of the struggles that all Christians endeavoring in this task have is reaching the “unchurched,” many of whom are believers who have been burned and hurt by the Church. Again, because we’ve made the rules matter more than people.

We like to say “All lives matter,” that saying that got popular as a response to the BLM movement. Do they? Or are the only lives who matter those who fit our standards? Those who follow our rules? Those who conform to what we want? If so, then what really matters to us are the rules and what would Jesus say about that?

I think you know the answer. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Preached on May 27, 2018 at Grace and Canadochly
Preaching text: None

I’m building a wall, a fine wall.
Not so much to keep you out.
More to keep me in.

Those are the lyrics to the chorus of a Pet Shop Boys song. The song is titled “Building a Wall” and appears on the pop duo’s 2009 release, “Yes,” which I’ve been listening too pretty regularly in my trips to and fro as your pastor (It’s in the car’s CD player.) Although it was released in 2009, there was a part of me when I listened to this song that thought it was rather timely, since walls have been in the news a lot lately. Most of that, of course, is due to statements made over the past few years by our President. Regardless of how you or I might feel about those statements and the potential public policy that may result from them, there is one thing we can agree on: what walls are for. As the song states, they are meant to keep you out or me in. They create division, a barrier. They are meant to separate, to keep us apart from something perhaps threatening, or keep us away from something because we are a threat to them.

And what do walls have to do with the Trinity on this Sunday?

Well, there are a lot of ways I could have preached today. I could have attempted what would likely be a futile attempt to make some sense of the Trinity doctrine, that is to say explain how it works. That would be foolish. The Trinity is another paradox, another divine mystery, something that is true but makes no sense from a logical or rational standpoint. Better instead to talk about what the Trinity is meant to tell us about God and additionally about ourselves. What does it mean?

Well, at the core, the Trinity is about relations. The Trinity is relational. The Father is parent to the Son. The Son is child to the Father. The Spirit is the connective tissue between them and also between them and us. They’re all apart of one another and we too, as believers, are a part of them and they a part of us. All interconnected. All in relationship. All together with no division or separation.

In other words, the exact opposite of a wall.

Everything about God is about relationship. God’s relationship within and with himself, the Trinity. God’s relationship with humankind. God’s relationship with the Church. God’s relationship with you and yours with him. And your relationship with one another and the rest of the human race. All interconnected. All together. All meant to be in relationship with one another. None of us, not even God, lives in isolation.

Scripture bears this out. Many point to the first creation story where Word and Spirit come from the Creator to form the universe. All together, all working to create what is, seen and unseen. But also it is found in the second creation story in Genesis, where God looks down upon Adam and declares “It is not good that the man is alone. Let us make a companion for him.” And so is made woman and families and the whole human race. Created specifically for us to be in companionship with one another.

As you trace through the stories, what upsets and unsettles God the most are the times when his people is NOT living in companionship with one another. The Egyptians enslave the Israelites, and so God sends a liberator to set things right. The Israelites in turn abuse and neglect the poor, so God sends prophets to call them back into right relationship with one another. Jesus himself comes to unite and to embrace, and gives no greater example than when he brings prostitutes and tax collectors into the fold in defiance of social convention. Jesus likewise prays, as we saw a few weeks ago, for the unity of his people: May they be one as we are one. That unity is relationship.

And, of course, we cannot forget Jesus’ own sacrifice on the cross and his rising again on the third day. Nothing separates us from one another more than death. Each one of us here can point to someone in their lives that they give just about anything to have by their side again: a parent, grandparent, spouse, child, friend, etc. God knows that desire and thus he sent Jesus to bring death to heel and to give us hope that the partings we have endured due to death will only be temporary. Your most precious relationships, even if touched by death, will not be gone forever.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Long have we claimed these are the most important words in all of Scripture. They highlight God’s intention to bring the world (and all of us) into right relationship with himself through Christ, an intention that saw fruition when Christ died and rose again.

But there’s another piece to it. Since we are given this right relationship with God through his grace, we are now called to have that right relationship with one another. This is why I preach the way I do. We spend so much energy, time, and resources on walls, both physical and metaphorical, that are always divided from the people we are meant to love. Yes, the world is a scary place, but do you know how we make it less scary? By reaching out to our neighbors, to those who are strangers, even to those who are our enemies, and developing relationship with them. When we see the world through their eyes, by listening to them and walking alongside them, we can come to understand. And if we understand, we do not fear. And if we do no fear, then we can embrace. It all starts and ends with love. Full circle. Kind of like the Trinity. Amen.