Here’s a graph that shows what rape culture looks like:
Here’s a list of helpful suggestions of how rape can be effectively prevented:
Placing responsibility for rape prevention on women is degrading to men.
It assumes that your natural state is “rapist”.
The responsibility is yours, gentlemen.
Click here to listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org
They say growing up is hard to do. And I think they’re right. Because growing up involves change and kids generally like to have a regular, predictable routine. I remember one time when life interrupted my routine and I had to adjust to a new way of doing things. It happened at the beginning of fifth grade. I was having a hard time adjusting to my new classroom, my new teacher, and more challenging homework assignments.
When I finally had all I thought I could handle, I made an appointment to see the school guidance counselor, Mr. Arnold. I walked into his office with my mind made up. I had a plan. I thought I already knew the solution to my problem, so I told him: “Mr. Arnold, this fifth grade stuff is too hard. I don’t like my teacher, I can’t keep up with the material, and I’m just not happy here. I’m obviously not ready for this. I think I just need to back to fourth grade.”
Well, you can imagine what Mr. Arnold’s response was. When he finally stopped laughing, he told me in no uncertain terms that returning to the fourth grade was not an option. Then he introduced me to a new word, one that I’ve carried with me ever since. To be honest, I think he made it up, but it describes so well what I was doing by asking to go back to fourth grade. Mr. Arnold’s word was awfulizing. He said, “You’re awfulizing this situation, and no, you can’t go back to the fourth grade.” And then he explained what he meant by that: my ten-year-old self was choosing to see only the negative parts of fifth grade and blowing them out of all rational proportion until I convinced myself that the only solution was to go backwards and stay in my old comfort zone. By awfulizing the situation, I was basically just giving in to despair and giving up on life. I was refusing to trust that life had given me enough resilience and adaptability to rise up and meet this new challenge.
Despair can be a powerful sedative. Awfulizing, while cathartic, is an addictive anesthetic that keeps us from feeling our growing pains. The upside is that it numbs our pain, but the downside is that it stunts our growth. Evolution only happens through struggle. Life has to be pushed past its previously known limits in order to adapt to new environments.
This is never easy. When it happens in the biosphere, there is always struggle and the imminent risk of failure and death. When it happens in the struggle for social justice, people stand up against powerful and entrenched institutions, like oppressive regimes, unjust laws, multinational corporations, and long-held beliefs, prejudices, and assumptions. Change only happens slowly and with great effort. Activist movements often struggle for generations before they reap a harvest from their labors. They endure persecution, ostracism, imprisonment, and death. Many lose hope and give up the fight along the way, but those who persevere become the catalysts for our social and spiritual evolution. For example, who could have guessed on the night of the Stonewall riots that, within a generation, several countries, the president of the United States, multiple states, and even a few religious institutions would recognize the right to marriage equality?
Change happens slowly, but it does indeed happen. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, “The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Not many know this, but Dr. King was actually adapting the words of the famous 19th century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. Parker said, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways… But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”
These words have been a source of comfort and hope to many in the struggle for justice. But the question arises, How do we know? How can one be so sure that this universe is arranged in such a way that we can be sure that right will win out in the end? Well, the short answer is that we don’t. Philosophers are quick to point out the naturalistic fallacy, a rule (if you will) of critical thinking which states that one cannot derive an Ought from an Is. In other words, you cannot logically draw a definitive conclusion about the way things should be based on the way things are. Take, for example, the following popular label on food and drug products: Contains All Natural Ingredients. We consumers are supposed to look at that and think that, because the ingredients are all natural, they must therefore be good for you. But we know that’s not true. You want to know what else is natural? Arsenic, Plutonium, and Hydrochloric Acid. These things contain all natural ingredients as well, but I wouldn’t want to put any of them inside my body! Just because something is natural doesn’t necessarily make it good.
So, how then can Rev. Parker and Dr. King say that the arc of the universe “bends toward justice”?
Well, I think we can start by looking at the facts. There are certain things we know about the universe that we would almost certainly label as good. How about the fact that we are here? We exist. Most would accept that fact as both true and good. How then did this favorable state of affairs come about?
Let me tell you a story: it takes place on a planet where a race of life forms has learned how to extract a vital resource from its environment. The downside is that the extraction process gives off a toxic gas that poisons the atmosphere. These life forms, with wanton disregard for anything other than their own immediate needs, willingly pollute the atmosphere of their planet for generation after generation until the air is saturated with poison. Yet, even then they continued their pollution. They kept going until the vast majority of life on their planet had been eradicated.
This sounds like a sad beginning to a dystopian science fiction story, doesn’t it? But it’s not. There’s a lot more science than fiction in this story because it happened right here on our planet about 2.4 billion years ago in what scientists call the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE). In the GOE, anaerobic cyanobacteria figured out how to extract hydrogen from water molecules. The poisonous air pollution that resulted from this process was a toxic gas known as oxygen. We don’t think of oxygen as pollution nowadays because we need it to live and breathe, but there was a time when it caused our planet’s first pollution crisis. The fact that we are here now, breathing oxygen, is a testament to life’s amazing capacity to endure and adapt.
They say, “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” You could say that’s certainly true in our case, where we now depend on oxygen for our very survival. We could say that one era’s pollution is another era’s air!
Life is amazing, isn’t it? The universe has taken almost 14 billion years to produce the people sitting in this room right now. You and I are sitting here as the end-result of billions of years of evolutionary success. Of course, we can’t say that it was all good, but I think most of us would agree that something must have gone right along the way! We’ve gone from single-celled organisms to fish, to dinosaurs, to mammals, to primates, to humans. We are the heirs of a vast evolutionary inheritance passed down from generations of ancestors leading all the way back to the stars themselves, in whose furnaces the atoms of our bodies were forged.
We’ve come so far, across eons and light years, to sit together in this room today. That’s quite a pilgrimage! We’ve overcome so much strain and adversity. The odds were (exponentially) against us ever getting here in the first place, but we beat the odds. We are here. We have overcome. In the words of Dr. King, we have hewn “out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope,” a precious jewel set into the ring of our being. Our very existence on this planet is a testimony to hope.
Other ancestors have testified to this hope as well. I’m thinking primarily of our predecessors in the liberal religious tradition: the Universalists. They were the great prophets of hope. They were the first to jettison doctrines of hellfire and damnation from their religion. They refused to give up on anyone because they believed there is hope for all. They taught that there is a place for everyone in this world and that all things will eventually come together for good. Rev. John Murray, one of the founders of Universalism in America, once said, “You may possess only a small light, but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men [and women]. Give them not Hell, but hope and courage.”
Liberal Universalist faith was founded on hope. We are gathered here this morning as heirs of both the evolutionary and the Universalist legacies of hope. We have more reason than most to draw strength and courage from this faith.
Sure, we can’t guarantee that any particular struggle for liberty or justice will immediately end in our favor. No one can promise that. But it seems, based on our scientific and religious history, that life itself can be trusted. Life endures. Life adapts. Life overcomes. This tendency seems to be woven into the fabric of the evolutionary process itself. To put it in human terms, using symbolic language:
When we stand on the side of love, the universe stands with us.
“The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
This assertion, far from being a justification for fatalism and inaction, has the capacity to fill us with hope, strength, and courage. When Desmond Tutu’s church in South Africa was once invaded and surrounded by a SWAT team during Sunday services, he stopped his sermon, calmly looked around, smiled, and said, “Since you have already lost, I would like to invite you to come and join the winning side.” At this, the congregation erupted with joy and began dancing… right out into the street where more soldiers were waiting, weapons at the ready. Not knowing what else to do, they stepped aside and let the dancers pass by unharmed.
Desmond Tutu’s faith that equality and justice would win out over evil in the end was the source of his amazing strength to keep going when the cause itself seemed hopeless. His faith proved stronger and more enduring than the powers of Apartheid. The strength of life itself flowed up and out through his heart, mind, and body as he committed his whole self to the evolution of the human spirit and society.
My hope this morning is that you and I might choose to trust life and embrace the faith of Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King, and Theodore Parker. May we come to know and feel the long, gentle arc of the universe, bending inexorably toward justice. May we draw strength from this hope and rise again to meet the challenges of injustice, trusting that, no matter what happens, life will overcome.
May it be so.
Be blessed and be a blessing.
Reposted from the Star Tribune
Bakker is looking for a Minneapolis location where he can mimic this stripped-down form of worship. No live band or music, no ornate trappings or traditions. Participants can talk about most any religious subject matter. Members of Emerging Church congregations like Bakker’s have often become disillusioned with institutionalized religion.
Too often, clergy in fictional media are portrayed as either demonic, judgmental hypocrites or sincere, mostly nice, but still basically useless. Hardly ever are we played as real, full human beings in our own right, complete with hopes and flaws. Here are a few that shatter such misconceptions:
Shepherd Book – Firefly, Serenity
Book: River, you don’t fix the Bible.
River: It’s broken. It doesn’t make sense.
Book: It’s not about making sense. It’s about believing in something, and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It’s about faith. You don’t fix faith, River. It fixes you.
Frank Lee Bukowski (a.k.a. Dr. Chen) – Eli Stone
Not technically a member of the clergy, but I included him anyway because Eli’s acupuncturist doubles as his spiritual advisor.
Eli Stone: But I don’t believe in God.
Dr. Frank Chen: Sure you do. You believe in right and wrong! You believe in justice and fairness! You believe in love! All those things are God! And that… [points to sunset] that’s God too.”
Fr. Brian Finn & Rabbi Jake Schram – Keeping the Faith
The truth is, I don’t really learn that much about your faith by asking questions like that… because those aren’t really questions about faith, those are questions about religion. And it’s very important to understand the difference between religion and faith. Because faith is not about having the right answers. Faith is a feeling. Faith is a hunch, really. It’s a hunch that there is something bigger connecting it all… connecting us all together. And that feeling, that hunch, is God. And coming here tonight, on your Sunday evening… to connect with that feeling, that is an act of faith.
Rev. Marilyn Sewell – Raw Faith
This one almost didn’t make the list since she’s a real person, but the documentary on her was so amazing, I just had to include it!
“There’s a lot of beauty in this world… and I expect that you’ll be a big part of it.”
Father Mike – The New Normal
I should confess that I don’t really follow this show, but my wife does and she made me sit through this episode just to see this scene. It was worth it.
“I never bought that Jesus-is-a-blissed-out-hippie crap. The man was pissed off.” He was “the Chuck Norris of his day,” and to turn the other cheek was “an act of defiance. It meant: I will see your insult and raise you a ‘suck it!'” Jesus “saw hypocrisy and injustice and said ‘Seriously? You guys are idiots. This has got to change!'”
Vedek Bareil Antos – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Major Kira: I’m useless here.
Vedek Bareil: So?
Major Kira: So? I… I need to feel useful.
Vedek Bareil: It might be interesting to explore ‘useless’ for a while – see how it feels.
Rev. Geraldine Granger – The Vicar of Dibley
Anyone who has ever had to sit through a parish council, session, or church board meeting will laugh at this show.
Geraldine: You were expecting a bloke; beard, Bible, bad breath.
David Horton: Yes, that sort of thing.
Geraldine: Yeah. And instead you got a babe with a bob-cut and a magnificent bosom.
Today marks 45 years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I want to share this video from the Anti-Defamation League:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3KyvlMJefR4%5DOf course, I had to share this as well:
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56mjwycKuXA%5DHere is another headline I read this morning. In the spirit of today, I think it belongs in this post as well:
Evangelical Pastor Fired for Supporting Marriage Equality and LGBT Inclusion
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” -MLK
European Bee-eater (Merops apiaster): a distant relative of the legendary Phoenix? Image by Pierre Dalous. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons,Before I say anything else, I think it would be appropriate on this particular Easter morning to express thanks for the brave work of the men and women of the Boonville Volunteer Fire Department in their handling of the fire that destroyed part of downtown Main Street this week.
I don’t know if you heard, but there was a class of kindergarten students that was looking at a picture of a fire truck with its crew and trusty Dalmatian close at hand. One student asked the teacher why fire trucks always traveled with Dalmatians. The teacher didn’t know, so the kids began to speculate. One said, “Maybe they help control the crowds.” And another one said, “Maybe it’s just for good luck.” But in the end they all agreed that the best answer came from the third kid who said, “They must use the dogs to find the fire hydrants.”
Like Dalmatians on fire trucks, there is so much in this world that we simply accept as present without asking why it’s there. Take the church, for instance. A lot of people go to church their whole lives without ever really asking why. What is the purpose of the church? Why is it here? Is it just to keep the pipe organ and stained-glass window companies in business? Is it just to give our pastor a place to bring all his corny jokes that no one else will laugh at? Is it a civic organization where people can gather as a community to reflect on their beliefs and values?
According to our ancestors in the Presbyterian tradition, the church does have a particular purpose. Actually, it’s a six-fold purpose. It was most clearly delineated and written down a little over a hundred years ago by the United Presbyterian Church in North America, one of the predecessor denominations to our current national church: the Presbyterian Church (USA). The statement written by our forebears is called The Great Ends of the Church and it reads as follows:
The great ends of the church are:
Now, I don’t expect you to remember all of these points at once. But starting today, we’re going to spend some time with the great ends of the church over the next several weeks (not including next week, when I’ll be away from the pulpit). One by one, we’re going to look at these related ends and ask ourselves why we are here. My ultimate hope is that our discussion of the great ends of the church might lead us to explore questions about what it is that God might be calling our particular congregation to be and do in this community and the world at large.
Today, we’re going to look at the first great end of the church: The proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind.
Now, that’s a mouthful of theologically loaded terms that don’t always conjure up the most positive mental images of the church. When the average person hears church-folks talking about “proclaiming the gospel” and “salvation”, the first thing they tend to think of is proselytism (the active recruitment of converts to one’s religion). In other words, they think of people going door to door with Bibles in hand, winning converts for Christ and saving souls for heaven. At best, people see this kind of activity as misguided and self-seeking. After all, aren’t these people just trying to grow the ranks of the church and fill the offering plate? Most folks (understandably) would much rather be left alone from this kind of “gospel”.
So what else might we mean when we say that the first great end of the church is the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind? Well, we’ll have to take a closer look at the words “gospel” and “salvation” in order to get a clearer picture about that. The word “gospel” simply means “good news” and the word “salvation” comes from the Latin word “salve” which means “to heal or make well”. So we’re really talking about some piece of good news that has the capacity to bring wellness to the entire earth community. When I let that definition roll around in my head, I imagine a TV news bulletin interrupting regularly scheduled programming in order to inform the public about some momentous discovery, like a cure for cancer, for instance.
For Christians, we see the life of Jesus as representing just such an occasion of good news. We see in him a way to heal the darkness, chaos, and brokenness of this world. We hear it in his teachings. We see it in his actions. Most of all, we believe this good news to be embodied in the stories we tell about Jesus’ death and resurrection. Whether or not we take these stories literally, we see them as expressions of truth: the truth that the pure Love living in Jesus could not be silenced or held back by the hateful, violent, and power-hungry forces of this world. No, this Love that he revealed to us is more powerful than all the crosses, all the bombs, and all the schemes of all the nations of the world. Death itself is not strong enough to keep this Love down. This Love is so powerful that we would even call it divine. We would go so far as to say that the Love revealed in Jesus pulses in the nucleus of every atom, in the core of every star, and in the heart of every person. No matter what you try to say or do to it, the divine Love of Jesus lives.
In other words: God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it.
That’s it. That’s the message of resurrection. That’s the story of Easter. That’s the gospel: the good news that brings wholeness and well-being to all.
The first great end of the church, the first reason why we exist at all, is to make this good news known to as many creatures as possible. The Love we see in Jesus should be apparent in our words and deeds as well. Our lives, as Christians, should make it easier for others to believe that Love does indeed conquer all (even death). Every service, every prayer, every hymn, every sermon, every building, every service project, every committee meeting, every rummage sale, and every dollar raised or spent should be directed toward making this one truth more clear and visible to the world:
Love conquers all.
God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Can we say that our church currently embodies this truth in everything we do? If not, how do you think we can do it better? What concrete steps can we take toward that end?
How about your individual life? Do people ever look at you and say, “Wow, that person’s life makes me want to believe that Love really does conquer all”? If not, then what concrete steps can you take to make the reality of Love more apparent in your life? Maybe it’s even something as simple as learning the name of your server in the diner where you eat lunch today?
There are bigger ways we can do this as well. This Easter morning, our congregation is collecting the One Great Hour of Sharing offering, which will go to support national and international organizations that provide, disaster assistance, hunger relief, and self-development resources to people all over the world. Grants funded by One Great Hour of Sharing go to support initiatives like the Water for Life project in the African country of Niger. Since 2006, Water for Life has dug six large wells for drinking water, 85 small gardening wells, and ten water-retention pools. “As a result,” according to the website of the Presbyterian Hunger Project, “19,892 people in 3,292 households, as well as 28,000 livestock animals, have benefited from improved access to potable water for drinking and food production. Additionally, over 853 acres of land have been cultivated with food crops and over 4,942 acres have been reforested.”
This is Love in action, embodied at a distance for people we’ll never meet.
On a more local level, I’d like to draw your attention to the post-fire recovery effort currently underway at the Boonville United Methodist Church. From the very beginning of this crisis, before the buildings had even stopped smoldering, the Methodist Church opened its doors as a command and resource center for victims. Donations of food, clothing, and supplies have poured in from all over our community.
Rev. Rob Dean tells me the one thing they need most right now is people who can come down to help sort and distribute donations. Starting Tuesday, I’ll be spending most of next week over there as well, lending a hand and assisting Rev. Dean with any pastoral care needs for the families. You’re invited to come along as well. We could really use the help.
I spent yesterday afternoon over there. When we sat down to dinner last night, we had more food than we knew what to do with. In that upper room together were displaced families, dedicated volunteers, exhausted firefighters, and two bewildered pastors who still had services to lead and sermons to write for Easter Sunday. Looking around the room last night, I discovered this sermon. I realized that I was witnessing resurrection in action, right before my eyes. In the midst of these people: suffering, hugging, laughing, and eating together. Within them and among them, new life was rising up from the ashes and taking flight like the Phoenix of Greek legend.
Friends, this is not just charity, nor is it simply a worthy cause. This is the good news that brings wholeness and well-bring. This is the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind. This is the first great end of the church. It is why we are here.
Dear Friends,
All of us are still reeling from the news of this week’s tragic fire that destroyed historic buildings, caused the death of several pets, and left 29 people homeless in our beloved village.
Churches and community agencies have all been quick to respond to this disaster, but special praise goes to our friends and neighbors at the Boonville Methodist Church and the quick-minded leadership of their new minister, Rev. Robert Dean. Since the early hours of the fire, Rev. Dean made the church available as a command and resource center for survivors. Donations of clothes, supplies, and gift cards have been generously pouring in from the community.
Taking a much-needed rest after almost two days of working around the clock, Rev. Dean and his family attended our Good Friday service. Immediately after that service ended, my first words to him were, “What do you need from us?” His first word back to me was, “Manpower.”
The most pressing need at the moment is for able hands to sort out donated clothes for distribution. Families are continuing to come by the church daily for aid. Volunteers have been assisting as they are able. If any of you have time in the coming days and weeks, please lend a hand to the recovery effort at Boonville Methodist Church. The building opens most days at 9:30am and closes at 5pm.
The word on the street is that the Boonville Chamber of Commerce will be setting up a special bank account next week to receive monetary donations on behalf of fire victims. The American Red Cross has also set up operations in the village for helping those in need. Contributions to that organization are always welcome.
Rev. Dean and I have also recognized the need for crisis counseling to be made available to these residents. Together, we are currently trying to organize a network of local clergy for on-site support and are seeking to enlist the more qualified assistance of professional crisis counselors from other community service agencies.
Moments like these are when we get to show the world what we are made of. May the Light of Christ rise up in us this Easter and shine hope into the darkness of despair! May it be so. Amen.
Be blessed and be a blessing,
Rev. J. Barrett Lee
Today is Palm / Passion Sunday. From the gospels, we heard about the final suffering and death of Jesus. Today also happens to be the 33rd anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador.
I brought this icon to church and set it upright on the Communion Table as I preached.
Instead of my own sermon, I preached Archbishop Romero’s final homily: the one he was preaching when he was gunned down in a hospital chapel on March 24, 1980… one week to the day before I was born.
I have tears in my eyes to think that I was able to bring his words to life again this morning. One of the little old ladies at my church commented on her way out that what he said is even more relevant today than when he first preached it.
It is as the good Archbishop himself said: “If they kill me, I shall rise again in the Salvadoran people.” Not only Salvadoran…
By some amazing coincidence, the gospel text for Romero’s last homily was John 12:23-26:
Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be.
Click here to read the full text of Oscar Romero’s last homily (in English)
Whatever you’re doing today, just take 3 minutes and sit with beauty before you do:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZmVK0ESAyG4%5D
My favorite part of our church’s mission statement is the part at the end where we declare that we are “open to all and reaching out to the world in love.” I like to remind you of those words at the beginning of worship every Sunday because they speak volumes about who we are and what we do in this community. The world at large desperately needs to hear this message about a community that is truly “open to all”. So many other groups and organizations, even churches, divide themselves from one another along ideological lines. Here in this church, it is my privilege to be a pastor to so many people from so many different political and religious backgrounds. I can testify from experience that the Spirit who binds us together is deeper and broader than any one set of ideas or opinions. This is a church that has been built from the heart up, not from the mind down.
Almost everywhere else you can go in the world, the exact opposite is true. Most people want to know if you agree with them before they enter into a relationship with you. But we are different. We’ll move over and make room for you in the pew no matter who you are, where you’ve been, or what you think. We’ll just keep on telling you that we love you, God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it!
Yup, we’re “open to all and reaching out to the world in love”. I want you to know this morning how rare and unique that is, especially for a church. I personally believe that this part of our identity is the key to our future as a church. This commitment to openness is what makes us different from so many other Christians, who make people pass some kind of dogma test before they’ll accept them.
Recently, I was engaged in an intense discussion with one of these “other Christians”. This person said to me, “You think it’s okay, in God’s eyes, for people to practice other religions. So then, why would anyone want to be Christian if it’s not the one and only true religion?” I thought that was a great question. Why would anyone choose to be Christian if they could also choose to be Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim?
I was reminded of this conversation when I read this week’s gospel passage from the lectionary. It’s the story of a woman named Mary of Bethany, who knelt at Jesus’ feet, anointing them with expensive perfume and wiping them with her hair. This was an incredible act of affection and devotion toward Jesus. Mary obviously loved and cared about him very much.
That got me thinking: if I was in Mary’s place, what is it about Jesus that would make me fall down on my knees in love and devotion? What is it about Jesus that makes me want to commit my life to him? Why am I a Christian?
I think this is a question that each and every one of us should ask. Whether you’ve just started coming to church or you’ve been here your whole life, you’ve decided to be here for a reason. We owe it to ourselves and the world to know what that reason is. I can’t answer that question for you. But what I can do is tell you why I’ve decided to be a Christian. I hope that my answer to this question might help you answer it for yourself.
So here’s what Christian faith means to me. This is what has driven me, like Mary of Bethany, to kneel down before the feet of Jesus and offer him all that I have and all that I am:
For me, being a Christian is all about love. Love is what I have experienced in and through the person Jesus of Nazareth. When religious scholars quizzed Jesus about the most important part of the Bible, he told them it all comes down to love: “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”.
Jesus embodied love in the way he lived his life. He broke bread with tax collectors, Jews who sold their own people out to the Romans in order to make a quick, dishonest buck. He pardoned the sin of a woman caught in adultery when the rest of her village was ready to stone her to death. He nurtured relationships with Samaritans, the ethnic and religious rivals of the Jews, and saw the best in them. He praised the faith of a pagan Roman soldier. He reached out and touched a leper, who had been shunned and exiled from society because of his disease. Finally, he spoke words of forgiveness to his executioners as they waited for him to die. This is love.
Love, he said, is the first duty of any religious person.
When he wasn’t around, Jesus called upon his followers to love each other in his place. Any good deed rendered unto the most despised and forgotten members of society, Jesus said in Matthew 25, he would count as service rendered unto him. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,you did it to me.”
The love that shone through Jesus came to have a profound impact on his followers. The apostle Paul declared that, if it wasn’t for love, all his words, knowledge, and faith would be meaningless. John the Beloved went so far as to let Jesus’ example of love redefine his idea of God: “God is love,” he said, “and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”
What I learned through Jesus is that God is not some angry judge, sitting high up on a cloud, hurling down lightning bolts at people he doesn’t like. No, God is that dynamic energy of love that flows out from within us. God works through persuasion, not coercion. This divine love takes on an infinite variety of forms, depending on the person and the situation. As we open ourselves up to this love more and more, we are continually filled with God’s Spirit, and we begin to resemble Jesus. Love, then, is the measure of our faith, not religious dogma.
Through Jesus, I learn how to love and I learn that I am loved. Jesus didn’t just teach people about love, he didn’t just point to love. No, Jesus embodied love in his very being and person. Love shone through his every word and deed. That’s what I mean when I praise Jesus as the Son of God and the Incarnation of God: Jesus is the embodiment of divine love who invites me to do and be the same, in whatever imperfect and limited way that I am able.
This is what takes my breath away when it comes to Jesus. This is why I want to fall down at his feet and offer everything I have and all that I am, so that I might be part of that love too. This is the kind of God that I can believe in.
For me it is no contradiction to believe that the dynamic God of love I discovered in Jesus can be active in the lives of people from every time, place, culture, and religion. I hear the voice of this God whispering to me in the pages of the Bible and singing to me in the clouds at sunset. Jesus has opened my eyes, ears, mind, and heart to experience the presence of God in all things. For this, I am amazed and give thanks. What else can I do but collapse to my knees before Jesus and worship?
That is why I am a Christian. It has nothing to do with creeds, dogmas, or being the one and only true religion. It has everything to do with love. I hope and pray that the people around me will experience through me, in some degree, the love I have received through Jesus (whether they recognize it by that name or not).
How about you? Why are you here in church today? If you call yourself a Christian, why do you choose that label for yourself? I want to encourage each and every one of you to answer that question for yourself today. Something has brought you here. You are not sitting in this church by accident. It is therefore incumbent upon you to ask yourself: Why?
In your imagination, put yourself in Mary of Bethany’s place: kneeling at the feet of Jesus, offering the very best of what you have and who you are. What has brought you here? Even as you acknowledge and respect the faith of others who are different, something about this faith and this person, Jesus, has captured your attention. What is it?
Answer that question for yourself and don’t be afraid or ashamed to share your answer with the world. There are people out there who need to hear what you have to say. Go out there today and tell them.
“Preach the gospel always… use words when necessary.”
May your words and your deeds say to the people of this world: “I love you, God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 