The Opposite of Love (1 John 4:7-21)

Those who trump up fear are at odds with God, whose primary action and identity is love. Preachers preach. Engineers engineer. Doctors doctor. God loves. Consequently, sowing fear against those who appear different is an act in direct opposition to God.

John says, “We love because God first loved us.” The way we typically read that passage is as an exhortation: “God loved us; therefore, we ought to also love others.”

But the older I get, the more convinced I am that it’s not an exhortation but a description: “God loved us; therefore, we are now capable of loving . . . where before we were incapable, bound up in our fear of losing our place to someone else.”

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Sermon Podcast: Who's Calling the Shots Around Here?

We live in a world in which, all protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, Good Friday still trumps Easter—a world in which children die in the dry night, and single mothers looking for a way to feed their hungry families are told that they’re only reaping the harvest of their bad choices, and teenage boys in hoodies must walk the suburban streets in fear, and the elderly have to decide whether their medication or having heat is more important the month.

Death too often calls the tune to which, sad to say, so many of us feel compelled to dance.

But I’ve got news for you—regardless of how it looks to you at present, regardless of who you think is calling the shots, Jesus is almost finished with his Lenten journey. And while the path he takes will ultimately lead him to a garbage dump on the edge of town called the “place of the skull,” the truth of the faith we profess is that that dump—which too casually deals in the art of death—is not the final destination.

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Sermon Podcast: Where Jesus May Be Found

Jesus announces a new order of things in which the anawim—a Hebrew word applied to those who are the very lowest in society, the huddled masses, the wretched refuse, the homeless, the tempest-tossed, the folks who live out next to the garbage dump of life—a new order of things in which the anawim occupy the places of honor, finally get to sit at the big people’s table, no longer handed the crumbs and the leftovers.

Jesus proclaims a new realm—unlike the kingdoms of this world with which the Tempter enticed him out in the wilderness just a few verses prior—kingdoms where some have and others are left holding the bag, where a few get to steamroll their way to the front of the line and everyone else gets flattened, where some have food, and others are left to starve. Because the reign of God does not exist where some are welcome and others are not.

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Sermon Podcast: Bringing Forth Justice

And don’t you think the church—among the inheritors of this promise to Isaiah—is always in danger of missing this point, convinced as it often is that the reign of God will be established only when the church gets everything right?

It’s easy to forget that the church isn’t an end in itself; it’s a tool, chosen by God to bring about God’s purposes. We find it easy to believe that God’s work will be accomplished by the force of the church’s charismatic personalities or through the power of its innovative programming—when in reality, God’s work very often gets done in spite of what the church considers its strength, rather than because of it.

Why?

Because, according to Isaiah, the glory of God shines in bruised reeds and dimly burning wicks. If you want to do the work of God, recognizing your brokenness is a good place to start.

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Sermon Podcast: On the Way

It’s so easy for us to believe that our lives are defined by those events we call significant. The truth of the matter is . . . we live most of our lives in the in-between times.

Most of our lives are spent returning to our “own country by another road.” The problem with living from milestone to milestone, however, is that we’re always in grave danger of missing God on the way.

The magi looked up, saw a star, and launched their boats in the desert. They had their eyes focused on Bethlehem, on meeting the special child.

But once they’d finally reached their destination, they were almost immediately sent again on their way. Because, you see, for them, as well as for us, Bethlehem is not the end of the journey, but the beginning—not home, but the place through which we must pass if ever we are to reach home at last.

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Sermon Podcast: There's a New Kid in Town (Guest Preacher: Darla Bailey)

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Sermon Podcast: God with Us

With everything going quickly to seed, we needed a sign of God’s salvation. We needed a God who wasn’t afraid to jump in and get dirty hands. We needed a God who wasn’t ashamed to walk the roads we walk. We needed a God who wasn’t afraid to be with us.

And that’s something I think we still look for. With the sands continually shifting beneath our feet, with the uncertainty of facing life in our precarious world, we need a God who’s not afraid to be with us.

We need a God who embraces our humanity, and not only our humanity, but a God who embraces us in the midst of each of our weak and fallen humanities.

When we cry out in the dry night of our shattered existences, we need a God who hears.

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Sermon Podcast: Recalibrated Expectations

"From the very beginning, Jesus indicated that the reign of God he was going to inaugurate would be different—upside down. Notice, he didn’t say, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to . . . . those who are already pulling their weight. He has sent me to proclaim future political stability after we kick the pagan Romans out of our homeland, to give those who were once powerful back their power, to make sure the rich get their fair share, to knock down the Roman pecking order and reestablish the Jewish pecking order, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor for the folks at the front of the line.”

"No. Jesus brings good news of the coming kingdom to those who know they need it—the poor, the prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed."

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Sermon Podcast: What If It's All Just a Dream?

"And for my part, I like to think Isaiah’s singing a song about a new day, a new world where the hope of God’s people will be met by the power of God’s saving hand—where those who’ve been cast aside, abandoned, 'othered,' left to die alone with no one to speak terrible and beautiful words over their lifeless bodies will 'come to Zion singing'; and 'they shall not hurt on all my holy mountain.'

"In a gray place where hopelessness seems to rule the day, in a flattened and dry land where walls are built, and where even in church, we often can’t see our way to welcome one another—we wonder how our perseverance in the struggle to follow Jesus, to live together faithfully makes any difference.

"Standing on tiptoes we peer with the eyes of hope into the darkness, awaiting a word from God about the dream of our deliverance from the desert."

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Sermon Podcast: I Must Come to Your House

"Yes, Jesus loves Zacchaeus even though Zacchaeus is a horrid human being. But a part of that love includes accepting not only Zacchaeus’ unworthiness, but also his offer of that unworthy self in the service of others who are struggling not just with guilt . . . but with trying to find enough food to eat.

"God doesn’t need much . . . a few otherwise sorry folks, working assiduously to hide their true identities, but willing to come when Jesus calls, and ready to lay it all down for those whom Jesus loves. God can turn the world inside out with a few Zacchaeuses."

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Sermon Podcast: The Great Reversal

The great reversal.  Is that good news or bad news?  I guess it depends on where you’re standing when you hear it.  

If you're one of those folks who's always coming up roses, if you’re relatively certain you’ve got this whole God thing pretty much nailed down, if you think when God goes on a recruiting trip, God’s looking for somebody pretty much like you . . . watch out.  This parable suggests that God’s fixing to mess up your world.

If, on the other hand, you happen to be one of those folks just trying to make it through the day, one of those folks just trying to stay one step ahead of the man, one of those folks that the vagaries of birth seemed not to bless . . . pay attention. You're just who God has in mind.

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Sermon Podcast: There's No Place Like Home

We thought the safest place to be . . . would be . . . to be . . . where we’d been . . . where we used to be.

We thought if we could just recapture what was here before, we’d be able to handle what was happening now.

The message of Jeremiah, however, is that the safest place to be is the place where God has placed us—which is to say, where God has made a place for us.

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Sermon Podcast: Cast Your Nets

This week (10/6), church member and elder, David Sprawls brings the message.

This one is definitely worth your time!

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Sermon Podcast: So What Do We Do?

"Jesus’ point is this: No matter what bible passages you use to excuse yourself, no matter how many televangelists tell you that God only wants a new Cadillac for you, no matter how insulated you remain from the cries of Lazarus one simple reality cannot be changed: The reign of God does not exist where some do not eat.

"We want to welcome everybody to the table—but we’d sure appreciate it if they'd clean up some before they get here.

"We like the idea of welcoming, of being in solidarity with those beat too far down to get back up—but we’d feel a whole lot better about everything if we could tell whether they genuinely deserve the help or if they’re just trying to scam the system.

"It’s tough. We don’t have riots in the streets at this point, but we know that we live right smack-dab in the middle of a world where some have and some do not."

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Sermon Podcast: Whatever Happened to Margaret Mary?

"The crimes against the powerless Amos lays out aren't just a few rotten apples. The crimes Amos names are institutionalized; they're accepted as part of the fabric of the society—you know, just the way things are.

"In other words, there are good church-going people who know what's going on—those who see the injustice being perpetrated on the helpless—and yet who remain silent. The big crime isn't just that greedy people are cheating the poor—that's nothing new—but that there are average people who know about it, and who ought to know better, but who stand by and let it happen anyway.

"God's putting the whole country on notice. It'd be nice to avoid blame by saying, 'It's those shady grain sellers, those dang pawn shop brokers, those lousy chaff vendors.' Unfortunately, that kind of abuse requires—if not the explicit endorsement—then the quiet approval of the community.

"That is to say, Amos calls out the whole country for turning its back on the poor."

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Sermon Podcast: What's It Going to Cost?

"The cost of discipleship is pretty steep. As Bonhoeffer said, if you accept the invitation to Jesus’ party, you don’t have to wander around looking for a cross to bear—there’s one waiting for you with your name already on it.

"Why? Because experience tells us that the cost of inviting the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind to the party is extraordinarily high. You go out on a limb for those folks whom everybody else says aren’t worth the effort and somebody might just come along behind you and saw it off.

"But we who follow Jesus can’t avoid doing the right thing, because somebody already crawled out on that limb for us and had it sawed off behind him. That’s what it costs. So how much choice do we really have?"

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Sermon Podcast: Jeremiah Was Not a Bullfrog

Tune in as awesome guest preacher, Darla Bailey, unpacks the background behind Jeremiah's famous passage about the potter and the clay.

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Sermon Podcast: It's Always about Politics

But in this story from Luke Jesus puts the lie to the notion that faith is best expressed in terms of "having a personal relationship with Jesus." This is a story about politics, about the ways we arrange all of our relationships . . . personal and otherwise.

This is a story, not about the lofty things that might otherwise occupy our religious reflection. This is an ordinary story about people, and lunch, and guest lists, and who gets invited, who gets left out, and why.

This is a story about how Jesus turns our world on its head, putting the first class folks at the back of the plane with pretzels and that little over head compartment that only has enough room for a couple of blankets and a fire extinguisher . . . while the folks who spend their lives sitting in the middle seat between the snorer and the salesman from Des Moines get ushered up to the front.

This is a story not just about how big our welcome has to be if we follow Jesus, but about how crazy and unrealistic it's going to appear to the rest of the world when we roll it out.

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Sermon Podcast: Teach Us to Pray

"That is not to say, however, that God doesn’t change the world through our prayers—God can feed the hungry, bring peace and justice to the strife-torn and the oppressed, heal the sick. God can even raise the dead. God’s proven all of that time and time again.

"But perhaps it’s easier to believe that God will magically make food for the hungry, bring peace and justice to the downtrodden, and heal the sick than to expect myself to become the kind of person that God could use to feed the hungry, bring peace and justice to the downtrodden, and heal the sick.

"God could change the world without us, I suppose, but God wants to do it through us."

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Sermon Podcast: No Telling What God Could Do

"But God we’re afraid. We’ve worked long and hard—us and the generations that came before us—and we don’t know where this is heading. We’re worried about what will become of us. We’re afraid that one day we’ll wake up and we won’t recognize the church we’ve known and loved.

"God whispers gently to us, 'I know. I know of your service, your dedication. I hold you and your work close to my heart. But there are even more people out there I want to hold close to my heart, and calling them to come home will require perhaps some different work than what you’ve done before. But don’t worry, my family is held together by my love—and not by anybody’s work (no matter how good).'”

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