As it Depends on You

 

Sunday, August 31^st, 2008

Proper 17A/Ordinary 22A/Pentecost 16

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 12:9-21

Theme: ‘simple’ instructions

 

“⁹Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; ¹⁰love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. ¹¹Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. ¹²Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. ¹³Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. ¹⁴Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. ¹⁶Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. ¹⁷Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. ¹⁸If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ¹⁹Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” ²⁰No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” ²¹Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  

 

Scripture – the Bible – is nothing if not varied.  If you look, you can find all sorts of stuff in there.  There are stories, wisdom sayings, poems, songs, terrible, angry diatribes, soaring words of hope and encouragement; there is history, political intrigue, there are outright soap operas, and there are jokes.  There are passages that we accept as being part of scripture but which we leave at that.  We rarely go to them to study or to unwrap to see what is trying to be communicated through them.  There are others that are simply mysterious – convoluted and so specific to one place and one time that we are hard pressed, even the best scholars, when we try to come to terms with what they could POSSIBLY mean.

 

And then there are passages like today’s reading. 

 

Beginning in the later 1800’s, when a story would break in one city and a reporter got the story, he would generally be one of many.  Communications being somewhat more limited at the time, it would often be the case that several reporters would have to share a phone or telegraph line to communicate with their headquarters, so it was not unheard of for them to be given a specific amount of time on the telegraph or on the telephone to transmit as much information as they could in the allotted amount of time before the next reporter had his turn.  That was where the headline originated – it was the first line received from the reporter in the field, it contained the most critical information:  who, what and where.  As the story progressed, more detail was added to fill in the gaps.  But the headline said the most important stuff. 

 

It may seem a little long, but in many ways, this morning’s passage can be read as a headline for living the life of a follower of Christ. 

 

To begin with they are pastoral words from a pastor’s heart to his yet-to-be- known congregation.  In a way, Paul seems to be packaging what lies at the heart of the gospel to get at least THAT across to the folks at the church in Rome.  Yes, this is not exactly at the beginning of the book – it may be more accurate to call it a summary, but it is one that more or less condenses the rest of the letter into these few sentences.            

 

“Let love be genuine” – simple enough, right?  Mean it when you tell someone you love them.  Express it in the way you talk about them, think about them, work beside them.  It CAN get a little harder, can’t it?  We can say we love someone all day, but when it comes down to sitting at the table together, or working on a committee, or sitting through a business meeting when we know we deeply disagree – THAT is certainly more of a challenge, isn’t it?   And yet, there it is:  the first thing Paul lists.   

 

Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good – it would seem to be an obvious choice.  But what is the first thing we lose when we get caught up in the throes of our emotions?  Perspective – or in another word – objectivity.  I don’t actually want to argue for complete objectivity.  We live in a world of individuals, and each of us HAS a subjective point of view.  I happen to believe that there is value in that.  I DO believe there IS an objective, value-neutral truth – that is, with any given occurrence there is a reality to the events that took place that would be a series of points of fact, that do not lend themselves to be spun one way or the other.  But the THING of it is, we are none of us value neutral observers.  To any given day, to any given comment, motion or action we each bring our respective understanding, experience, and shade of glasses, if you will.  So when we climb up on our soapboxes, or ride away on our white horses, wearing our white cowboy hats, we need to be reminded, there indeed IS good and evil in this world, but it is very DEFINITELY something that we need to check with others on before we call something good that, in different circumstances and from another perspective is most certainly evil.  That is part of the reason Christ called us to live in community.  It is the genius behind the concept of checks and balances.  If we keep in mind that we are not infallible, and that we ARE prone to misunderstandings, and jumping to conclusions, making fast, unfounded assumptions, as long as we KNOW that about each other and ADMIT it about ourselves, we’ll be able to extend grace to each other on those occasions when we go off and DON’T listen to our better judgment – that that comes from holding counsel.  That’s why Paul says “Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.” Because it is IN that mutual affection and showing honor that we find we are not so different, we are not so distant from each other, we are not so far apart in our ideas and ideals.

 

The next set of instructions just seem to run together so well –

 

¹²Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. ¹³Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. ¹⁴Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

            

In cooking, there is a term:  reduction.  It is the name of a process whereby you begin with a large amount of something, usually liquid – a soup, or the drippings from a piece of meat or a bird that has been cooked, and you boil it down – you cook off some of the excess liquid – until what is left is full of concentrated flavor.  

 

These verses are a wonderful reduction of whole chapters that Paul has written before or of which Jesus spoke during his ministry.  To rejoice in hope is to stand in the face of what would be a hopeless situation and say “this will not kill the hope that I have found in Christ my Lord.”  To be patient in suffering is to understand that there is something to be learned through suffering.  Whether the lesson is for the one suffering or for the ones who surround the one who is suffering, there is something to be gained through the experience.  Admittedly, it can sometimes SEEM a senseless suffering, but we must stand on the promise that we read just a few chapters back, in Romans 8:28, where Paul writes “we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  This is part of that thought – a distillation of it. 

 

“Persevere in prayer.”  In simple words, Paul is saying “KEEP PRAYING!”  The WAY you pray – the words you use, the way they are put together, the flow, the expressiveness, the beauty of the way the words come together, that is ALL secondary.  It is the act of prayer – the engagement of the Spirit – the coming into the presence of the Lord with a humble, troubled, aching, yearning, thankful, pleading, longing heart that makes the difference, that begins to effect the change in our spirits that results in a change in our lives. 

 

Contribute to the needs of the saints, extend hospitality to strangers.  Bless those who persecute you: bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.   

 

Now he’s beginning to move outside of the individual, into the community.  These instructions provide us with an image of how we are to be in fellowship with each other.  They truly are simple instructions for living the life of faith.  Live in harmony with one another.  We ALL want to do that, but sometimes we don’t want to accept what needs to happen in order to DO that – so Paul goes the next step and spells OUT at least two ways TO do it: 1. Don’t be haughty – don’t be stuck up, conceited, and 2. don’t respond in kind when someone does something bad to you.  It ties in with Christ’s enjoining us to be ‘in the world but not of it’ that we find in John 17.  The world functions on hierarchies and on retaliation and revenge.  They are so caught up in worrying about appearing weak that the last thing that comes to mind when we are attacked is to do something GOOD in return.  There are chains of command, lines of responsibility, due processes, and pecking orders.  Jesus spoke of one head – him, and one body – us.  We work together.  This – the church – is NOT to be another example of one person ordering everyone else around.  This – this living in community, in fellowship, in communion with each other is a study in self-giving, in mutual support and encouragement, in being subject each to the other under the Lordship of Christ.  This is not a place where power is to be wielded over others, but a place to live out our service of love for each other.  

 

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?  It means that living out our service of love doesn’t stop with those names on our rolls or the families pictured or named in our directory.  It extends beyond the walls of this building, beyond the borders of this county, this commonwealth, and this nation.  That is why Jesus said Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.              

 

The last section of the passage speaks to how that service of love for each other will unfold in the world at large.  And that, in and of itself, presents a challenge of a whole different sort from the one we deal with when we are trying to love the person we’ve grown to know and appreciate over the years, sitting beside them in worship, praying next to them at family night suppers, standing next to each other at baptisms and funerals.  We have an understood and accepted commonality of experience when we talk about loving someone who lives three miles down the road from us.  To understand and accept that Jesus calls us to love and accept the one who lives 3 THOUSAND miles away across the ocean or across the continent CAN present a huge challenge, but not an insurmountable one. 

 

Jesus sat across from and spoke to the most unlikely person a Hebrew man in good standing would have been expected to be seen with:  a Samaritan woman, and in the course of that conversation he spoke to her of a common thirst that crosses all barriers of race, and culture – even of religion:  it is the thirst for God – for the life of God that we all long for and try to fill so unsuccessfully with other things:  with noise, with things, with busyness, with gossip, with food, with any number of things that in no way and by no measure of success come even close to meeting our need for God in our lives!  THAT is the commonality of experience that we share with ALL of humanity – no matter WHERE we are, no matter where we live, no matter what language we speak or what culture we grew up in.  And THAT is the deepest bond that can draw us together into this understanding of mutual need that we ALL share with the rest of the world!  We are no less needy for having been raised in a society that provided a relatively safe haven for that need to be met.  We ARE, because of that, even MORE constrained to share that message and opportunity for that life with the world around us at every opportunity.

 

Let’s pray.  

Conform vs. Transform

 

Sunday, August 24^th, 2008

Proper 16A/Ordinary 21A/Pentecost 15

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 12:1-8

Theme: Living out our individual gifts through the Holy Spirit

 

 “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. ²Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. ³For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. ⁴For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, ⁵so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. ⁶We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ⁷ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; ⁸the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.”

 

There’s a problem with Paul’s letter to the Romans.  SOME would consider it a problem.  Others most likely wouldn’t.  It just depends on where it catches you.   This is it:  there’s too much there. 

 

You may have become aware of it as we’ve been going through Romans over the last couple of months.  Generally speaking, the passages we’ve been reading are several verses long.  And what usually ends up happening is that I will focus on a phrase, or a particular verse within a passage, or a central idea within the thought being expounded on, and more or less let go of the others.  There’s a reason for that; it is actually a calculated move.  Romans is one of the ‘meatiest’ letters of Paul.  There is very little “fluff” in it.  That may go without saying, if you are at all familiar with it.  But what ends up being the case is that we COULD, if we wanted to, spend … at the very LEAST several months, if not several YEARS going through this letter phrase by phrase, paragraph by paragraph, even word by word.  In case you are wondering, I don’t plan to do that!  Yes, we’ve spent the better part of the summer going through it, but as you’ve seen, we are just covering parts of it here and there.  If you remember, I think for the first Winter Bible Study we did after we moved here, we studied Romans, and even then, we knew going in we weren’t going to exhaust it.  That is why we go back and touch on things time and time again – in some cases, because of new readings – new ideas that come through in a new way after reading the same familiar passage, in others simply because we knew we were going to come back to “the other part” of a particular passage later – sometimes months, sometimes years later.  The point is, although we have touched on parts of different chapters in Romans, beginning in chapter 3 at the beginning of June, and continuing today as we are in chapter 12, you can count on coming back through these same chapters at some point in the not-too-distant future.  It is a treasure trove of faith and practical application and understanding to help us in our daily endeavor to get to know God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.  

 

So, on to the text:  I want to deal with the CON-form vs. TRANS-form issue up front – the thought that prompted the title to today’s message.  First, definitions:  to conform means “to be the same as or very similar to something or somebody, or make something similar”, while to transform means “to change somebody or something completely, especially improving their appearance or usefulness, or to change completely for the better”. 

 

Now:  how is Paul using the words?  In relation to what our relationship to God is supposed to be like, or to affect us, influence us … over and against the relationship we are to have with the world around us.  He says it outright:  to allow the Spirit of God to transform us (to change somebody or something completely, remember?). 

 

The question that MIGHT pop into your head when you hear that is, hopefully, “what does that LOOK like, this ‘transforming of the mind’?”,  and how can we tell the difference between it and what being ‘conformed to this world’ looks like?

 

It used to be simpler.  But then, everything was at some vague point in the past.  Life was simpler when we were children – that goes for all of us.  It’s an accepted paradigm.  For almost anyone, our childhood is nowhere near as complicated as our adulthood.  Yesterday as we were driving back from the retreat at Camp Crossroads, Leslie looked over at me and asked if there was any way we could simplify our life.  She had been remembering watching the pictures at our anniversary luncheon, seeing pictures from inside the parsonage shortly after we moved here, and noticing how little stuff there was around the house.  This time of year we become even more acutely aware of the busyness of our life, especially as we go through the backpack and school supply collection and distribution process.  I answered “I’m sure there are, I just can’t think of any at the moment.” 

 

Her comment may have been prompted by a daily devotional thought we both subscribe to – it is from a website established by the Church of the Savior in Washington DC – it’s called ‘inward/outward’, and yesterday’s devotional was from Richard Foster’s book Freedom of Simplicity.  I’ll tell you right now that I’ve not read the book, but after reading the excerpt, I have it on my list to get as soon as possible.  In the few paragraphs that were quoted, Foster tells of reading a book by another author, Thomas Kelly’s Testament of Devotion.  I think I just added that to my list of books to read as well.  To make a long illustration short, what Kelly proposed and Foster resonated with was the need, the ability, the desire to live out of the center of our lives – what DO we center our lives around?  Is it work?  Is it school?  Is it church activities, committee meetings, responsibilities, or is it our relationship with our Lord? 

 

Foster tells of realizing that he spent a LOT of his time doing good, noble, meaningful things, but being miserable and exhausted because of it.  He knew how to say yes, but based it primarily on what would make him look good.  He was neglecting an inner connection with God that needed to be nurtured and maintained.  He tells of his first decision to begin to put the practice of Christian Simplicity into action.  He decided to set aside Friday evenings for his family.  Shortly thereafter he received a call from a friend asking if he’d speak to a group the following Friday evening.  He hesitated, then said ‘no’.  There was a pause at the other end of the line, and after what seemed to be a long time, his friend asked if he had another commitment, to which he simply answered ‘no,’ and didn’t elaborate on the why of the negative response.  He writes that they exchanged a few other ‘pleasantries’, as he called them, and the call ended.  Foster wrote that he doubts his friend even remembers the conversation, but to him it was a world-changing event.  There’s a comment section on the website where you go to read the full devotional if it doesn’t, like this one didn’t, fit in the email that goes out, and the first or second comment made was a disagreement with one small point – that Foster did indeed have another commitment on that Friday evening – with his family, and through them, with God.

 

As Leslie Sanders touched on last Sunday, and as we are all aware with the distribution of our Nominating Committee report, and our upcoming special called business meeting, we are in that time of year where we gear up to jump into the fall season of activities, with a new year starting, with, in some cases, new responsibilities, new roles, new duties among all the different things that have become part of what we call ‘the life of the church’— through which we are trying to figure out what it means to be workers “together with God” in this endeavor to break in the Kingdom of God on Earth.  It is a high and noble calling.  It’s a worthwhile effort.  It is to the benefit of our community and in a small way to the benefit of the world. 

 

But I think we do seriously need to ask ourselves, not in a selfish way, but in a realistic way, Paul calls it ‘not thinking of yourself more highly than you ought to think’ is what I am doing, what I have offered to do, coming out of a sense of duty, of a sense of responsibility, of requirement, or is it coming out of a heart full of gratitude for what God has done in my life? 

 

I fully realize that can be a dangerous question to ask 3 days before we vote on the Nominating Committee report, but I think it is a necessary question to ask.  If we are engaging in an activity that is going to reflect as ‘the life of the church’ and all it does is drain the life out of US, because it imposes on us a sense that ‘we do this to please man, and not God’ then maybe we need to NOT be engaged in that activity.  I honestly didn’t have any particular in mind as I wrote that, it was just something that needed to be said. 

 

Over the last couple of days, at the retreat we attended, the speaker mentioned a book that I began to read several months ago, but have yet to finish:  it is called ‘The Simple Church’, by Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger.  In it, THEY boil down the purpose of the church into three simple goals:  Love God, Love Your Neighbor, and Serve Your Community.

 

Paul speaks of the church as the body of Christ beginning in verse 4 of the passage.  He names just a few of the gifts we might see within the body of believers.  His exhortation to the believers in Rome and to us here is to use those gifts for the purpose of glorifying God. 

 

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? 

 

It means this:  if what we engage in, as individuals, as an organization within the church, or as a family of faith doesn’t fall into one of those 3 simple categories, then perhaps we need to rethink its place in our life as a community.  I’d like to draw your attention to verse 5.  Paul writes:

 

“… so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another”   

 

“Individually we are members one of another”.  Paul is speaking to what it truly means to be part of a community of faith.  We have traditionally called ourselves a church.  That is an entirely appropriate term.  We call ourselves a community of faith, a family of faith, and that is fine as well.  And we have also called ourselves a ‘body’.  With the prevailing ethos of our society being one of business and organizations related on whatever level to THAT, when we use the term ‘body’ in the corporate sense, it seems we have … turned it into a soulless term, a term devoid of physicality, if you will.  We’ve lost the connection that is evident if you take the words at face value. 

 

If we are the body of Christ, think of what that means in terms of your own body: a hand, an arm, a leg, a foot.  Think of your right hand as Sam, and your left hand as Elwood.  Think of your eyes as Helen or Edythe, your legs as Frank, or Cliff, your feet as Soozin or Joyce.  Think of your heart as Margie, your lungs as Linda and Hilda … we are each an integral part of this body – not in a corporate, business sense, but in the flesh and blood sense of being a valued and valuable part of what this body needs to live – to move, to breath, to think, to ACT, to do.  

 

In a lot of ways, that is what this sheet of paper, this list of positions and responsibilities is trying to put in black and white for us AS A BODY.  So as we think in terms of what we do as a part of Jerusalem church, I would invite us all to frame those thoughts in terms of what a body needs to survive, to thrive, and to grow.                     

                              

 

Let’s pray.  

Speaking The Truth in Christ

 

Sunday, August 3^rd, 2008

Proper 13A/ Ordinary 18 A/ Pentecost +12

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 9:1-5

Theme: Lost Opportunities and the redemptive action of God

 

 “¹I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit— ²I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. ³For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh. ⁴They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; ⁵to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.”

 

Can you hear the anguish in his voice?  Yes, he SAYS as much, but can you read into the passage this morning the profound sorrow that Paul must have struggled with his entire ministry?  Having once been on THAT side of the divide?  KNOWING what it was like to NOT see Jesus for who he was and realizing as each day passed that more and more of his fellow Hebrews were going on with their lives in some cases INTENTIONALLY turning their back on what to him had become as plain as the nose on his face?  That the long-awaited Messiah had come, and they had rejected him so completely as to turn him over to their Roman oppressors to hang him on a cross to die a blasphemous death? 

 

Yes, there was some positive response, even some glimmer of hope from the church in Jerusalem, but the folks who were coming out of Jerusalem were coming out with a stunted understanding of what had – again – been made clear to Paul – that Christ had come not ONLY for the Jews, but for the Gentiles as well, and the Gentiles were ‘getting it’ much more readily than the Hebrews were. 

 

Can you imagine?  Can we imagine for a few minutes what it would be like, to belong to a group of people who had documented proof that God – the Lord God Jehovah, creator of Heaven and Earth, had entered into a covenant with them and called them his own?  What would it feel like to belong to that select a group of people?  What would it be like to grow up with your identity completely undergirded by the understanding that YOU are part of the elect, that you are one of the chosen people, from the tribe of Israel. 

 

I suspect it would give you a certain air, a certain confidence, a certain attitude – to be so blessed.  I’m not sure we can relate completely to what that might feel like … but then, maybe we can.   Maybe we are not so different from our Hebrew Brothers and Sisters in first century Palestine. 

 

After all … with a few exceptions, I think we can say that the majority of us here today cannot remember a time when we weren’t somehow connected to church folk – somehow we got the message that belonging to a church meant you were “in.”  And since it has been an element of our own individual “universes” all our lives, it isn’t that different from what the Hebrews experienced on at least ONE level. 

 

This is what  Paul was lamenting:  that with all the rich heritage the Jewish people had received over the centuries, by way of the prophets, scriptures, songs, worship, the whole shebang, so to speak, when the time came to really understand what it was all about, they just didn’t GET it.  It didn’t register with them that all that they knew was leading up TO Jesus. 

 

Let’s not forget, Paul didn’t get it either.  Not right away.  As you remember, he spent a good deal of time PERSECUTING the followers of Christ until he actually ran INTO Jesus on the road to Damascus one day.  There’s a reason we call it a ‘Damascus Road Experience’ when someone undergoes an epiphany – a revelation SO intense that it transforms one’s entire life to the point of becoming a totally different person from the one you were the day before – so much so that a NAME change may be in order – THAT kind of transformation is what Saul – now Paul – HOPED for for everyone of the tribe of Judah, but never saw happen. 

 

Since father’s day, when Judson made HIS profession of faith, I’ve had a few moments to contemplate the fact that there is an immeasurable degree of comfort in the knowledge that if something were to happen to one, some or all of us – the Park family – tomorrow, there would be cause for grief, yes, but there would be a degree of consolation in knowing that that death would not mean eternal separation from one another.  Please understand, while I BELIEVE in eternal life, it is not the sole focus of the reason I follow Christ and have received him as Lord and Savior – that has to do as much with what we can do in this world FOR God as what happens to us beyond this world, after our lives are spent. 

 

So we are faced with Paul being willing to give up HIS place in the Kingdom for the sake of the salvation of his people – it weighed that heavily on him.  His statement that he could wish himself accursed and cut off from Christ for the salvation of his people echoes a similar emotion expressed by Moses to God, while wandering in the wilderness.  He, Moses, recognized that the people of Israel had sinned so profoundly that God was justified in his condemnation of them, and yet, he interceded on their behalf and asked God instead to blot HIS name out of the book of life instead – to cut HIM off – and allow through his sacrifice for the redemption of the Israelites. 

 

Hmmm … sound familiar?

 

What does it mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton – meaning, I hope this is understood – what does this mean for us as the people who make up this congregation named Jerusalem?

 

There is a central aspect to the life of a disciple – of one who is seeking after God’s own heart, who is WANTING to do God’s work, who is, in our terms, WANTING and working to be Christ’s presence here and now that overrides pretty much all others – and that is to be a living sacrifice.  As people given to God and to God in Christ, and to God in the Holy Spirit, we are just that – GIVEN.  We are no longer our own.  We belong to someone else.  And that someone else, of course, is Jesus.  Belonging to Christ means we are more about doing what God wants than what we want.  It means that the FIRST question we ask is “what would God want me to do/learn/say/be?” in any given situation.  And by any given situation, I mean that as broadly as it sounds.  ANY – GIVEN – SITUATION.  Wherever, whenever, with whomever we are with.   

 

You see, as his church, as Christ’s body, WE are the ones that are going to be carrying out his redemptive work in the world.  We TELL about his redemptive ACT in history, but we LIVE out his redeeming LIFE through the way we live our own.  It’s that simple, that profound, that demanding, that all-encompassing.  We are the ones that the world will look to and say ‘Oh, so THAT’S what it means when someone says ‘God Loves You!’  The question is, what is the ‘THAT’ they will be talking about?                    

 

Let’s pray.