Cut to the Chase

Psalm 133

1 John 4:7-21

Do you remember when billboards like these began to pop up?  Pithy little notes, apparently written by God.  

 

Life is short.  Eternity isn’t.  (One of the newer ones.)

Well, you did ask for a sign.

I miss how you used to talk to me when you were a kid.

What part o “Thou shalt…” didn’t you understand?

Keep using my name in vain, I’ll make rush hour longer.

Have you read my #1 bestseller?  (There will be a test.)

We need to talk.

I understand that the billboards began in south Florida in 1998 when an anonymous donor decided to create andad campaign, not for a business, not for a particular church, not for anything else, but to try to create a spiritual climate and get people thinking about a daily relationship with a loving and relevant God. (www.godspeaks.com)

My favorite is this next one from the original campaign in 1998 - - 

“That ‘Love thy neighbor’ thing… I meant that.”

It just cuts to the chase, doesn’t it? It gets right on down to the heart of the gospel, the core of Jesus’ preaching, teaching, healing, disturbing, dying, rising, and living. “Beloved, let us love one another.”


Sometimes short and simple is best. (I know, a dangerous statement to make from the pulpit…while preaching…what is usually a less than short message…but certainly not the longest in town!)

Sometimes short and simple is what is needed to get the message across in a way that jars someone just enough to hear it in a new way, but not so much that they are thrown completely off course.

Sometimes short and simple is what it takes to guide a mission, set a vision, and move a community forward.  “Beloved, let us love one another…. God is love….”

This is what it is all about.
This is what our faith is all about.

This is what our church is all about. 

This is what our life is all about. 

This is what our God is all about.

LOVE!  It’s short.  It’s simple.  It’s love.

Yet over and over and over again we make our faith and our life together about so much more.  We make it so much more complex.  We add layers upon layers of rules and expectations and understandings and policies, oh the policies. 

Our fear of the unknown,

our fear of losing control,

our fear of where love might take us,

our fear of what we might be asked to do,

our fear of what we might have to give up takes over

and then before we know it,

without even noticing we have completely clouded what it’s all about,

what following Jesus is supposed to be all about. 

It’s not about fear. 

It’s not about judgment. 

It’s not about setting up rules. 

It’s not about deciding who is in and who is out. 

It’s not about protecting the carpet. 

It’s not about perfecting the music. 

It’s not about coming up the most elaborate craft. 

It’s not about the tastiest snack (no matter how much we love those tasty snacks). 

It’s supposed to be about love,

·         love that looks like a father sending his only son to show the world what life is really about,

·         love that looks like the one who is divine coming to abide with us, dwell with us, live with us,

·         love that looks likes self-giving and self-sacrifice

·         love that looks like the holy one entering the experience of the profane,

·         love that looks like boundaries of gender, ethnicity, religious party, political leanings, class, all being broken down,

·         love that looks like touching the untouchable, speaking to the forgotten, feeding the hungry, praying for the hurtful.

It’s about love because God is Love, and Love chose to live among us. 

Love chose to walk in our experience,

to live in our skin,

to see with our eyes,

to face our temptations,

to hunger our hunger,

to cry our tears,

to laugh with our joy. 

Love chose to dwell with and love chooses to dwell in us, showing us how we can love each other. 

Everything we do as people of God, as people of Love, then should be about doing this same thing.  Everything we do should be about living with our brothers and sisters, those people who have been born into the same human family as we have been born even if they live in this family in very different ways. 

Everything we do as people of Love should be about dwelling in each others’ experiences –

seeing through another’s eyes,

facing another’s temptations,

hungering another’s hungers,

rejoicing in another’s laughter. 

Everything we do as people of Love should be about breaking down boundaries and giving ourselves in love to our brothers and sisters around us, to the world around us.

In just a little bit we are going to ordain and install new officers in our church, ruling elders and deacons who have been called by God through the voice of this congregation to lead us through their service.  On behalf of the whole church I’m going to ask them to affirm a whole lot of different things in ten different questions about their faith, their understanding of their call to leadership, and how they will be guided as they guide this church.  And as much as a I love our tradition and understand, at least a little bit, why we ask all those questions, on a day like today, in light of a Scripture like this one, I wish we could ask just one simple question - - “Do you accept the call to lead with God’s love in this church and the world?”  That’s what it’s all about – for the officers of the church, for the members, for the friends, for the people of God and God’s love everywhere.  When we cut to the chase, it’s all about showing love.

Turn Around

Psalm 32:1-7
1 John 1:5 - 2:2

The other morning as I was getting the kids ready to leave the house in the morning, I overheard a confession from the other room. The kids, to my knowledge, had had a great morning; everyone was getting along well, staying on task, helping each other. Or so I thought. From the hallway outside their bedroom, as clear as a bell I heard William's voice, "Hey Karoline! Don't tell Mom, but I hit Margaret in the head with my light saber when she was still in her crib. It was an accident. But I hit her."

Knowing that Margaret was just fine since she hadn't made a peep and there was no sign of the this hit in the last hour I had spent with her, I moved right past worry about the injury to wonder at William's response. He had been sitting on this little nugget of truth for over an hour. His only witness to the "crime" was himself and his 21 month old sister who couldn't divulge the secret easily or audibly. There was no logical reason to share it with anyone, but apparently he felt he needed to let it out. He needed to get it off his chest.

His little not-quite-five year old soul was maybe an age appropriate version of the soul the Psalmist describes. While he kept silence it was groaning all morning long, his strength to go on carrying this burden dried up like water on the sidewalk in the heat of a summer day. Aren't these descriptions beautiful? Aren't they accurate? We can feel that feeling in our spirits, in our souls. That feeling of carrying more than we know we can; that feeling of our energy been drained right out of our consciousness because we know we have started down a wrong path. We have felt what it is like to know that we have moved further away from the people we were created to be whether it is in thought, word, or deed, and we have felt what it is like to want to be rid of that truth.

A few weeks ago when we were working our way through the first chapter of Mark's gospel we saw the Jesus' mission was one of reversal. He touches tshoe who carry the spiritual contagion of uncleanliness. He surrounds himself with "mere mortal" fishermen, not synagogue leaders. His identity is recognized by demons, but not religious men. Over and over again in the gospels he is upsetting the norms of life around him. He touches those who carry the contagions of uncleanliness. He heals on the sabbath. He includes women in his inner circle. He talks to foreigners.

Over and over again he challenges the expectations of "good religious folks." Over and over again he stands up in the face of a culture that honors money, political authority, and honor and proclaims God's blessing for those who are poor, those who have no voice in the public square, those who are empty before God and humanity. Over and over again Jesus demonstrated and taught that the way we tend to go, the direction we would choose on our own, the one that makes us feel good, the one, actually, that makes us feel better than others, is not the direction God chooses for us.

From the very beginning Jesus announces, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Repent, I said, isn't the scary word that sign carriers and street corner shouters have turned it into. Repent simply means to turn around, to go in the other direction. When Jesus calls it out to the crowds who listen to him, to his disciples who are near to him, to believers who still struggle to this day to join him, it means stop moving away. Turn around. Reverse your direction. Follow me.

Somewhere inside each of us is the urge to turn around, and the first step of turning around is acknowledging we're moving in the wrong direction. The letter from John calls it sin, darkness, unrighteousness. The Psalmist uses transgression, iniquity, and deceit. For William it was a whack with light saber. Intentional or unintentional, in our mind, in our heart, or in our actions, we find ourselves moving in directions away from God, but the promise the gospel delivers is one of reversal in Jesus our Christ.

Each week in worship we take the first step toward reversal corporately. We lift our voices and our hearts in prayer as we acknowledge the ways we have turned from God. We speak them out loud together, confessing even if not or own specific failings the ways humanity falls short of what God desires. This act of confession is something we do weekly, usually at the beginning of the service so that we are clearing the air right when we walk in the door. We are recommitting ourselves to walking in the way of God as we great the day with joy and praise. We are being cleansed and presenting ourselves wholly and completely before God in worship.

Likewise this practice of confession is one that is integral to the season of Lent. If each Sunday is a little Easter, a little celebration of the resurrection, in which we wouldn't think of worshipping without coming clean before God, how much more important is it stop what we're doing in Lent, acknowledge the ways we move from God, and begin the process of reversal, the process of following Jesus before the celebration of his new life on the feast of Easter? This whole season is about examining our lives, confessing to God the ways we have turned away, and recommitting ourselves to discipleship with our whole lives.

We take the first step toward reversal by naming that which has gone wrong in our attempt to follow Jesus faithfully, and when we do we should also always, every sing time, without fail, we hear the good news he proclaims. The kingdom of God is near. The possibility for a new future here. Turn around and enter that future today.