SCRIPTURE: 1 John 3: 16-24
TEXT: 16We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. THEME: Live love in a way that makes a good difference in other people’s lives. INTRODUCTION Do you remember the “Live Aloha” bumper sticker? I once observed that those who had them on their cars wanted everyone to aloha them without them showing any aloha in the way they drove. We want people to aloha us, without our having to aloha anyone. Aloha is one sided when we live it like that. But do you remember where the “Live Aloha” bumper sticker came from? It started in 1993, by a group of three people (Mike McCartney, Constance Hassell and Robbie Alm) who were frustrated at how government was dealing with local issues affecting our state. They wanted reform. They gathered a wide and diverse group of 40 people to discuss what to do. They “concluded that Hawai‘i needed its people to take much more responsibility in their own lives for what Hawai‘i was and what it could become. The group knew what they were up against: the crushing burdens of day-to-day modern living—traffic, cost of living, drugs and violence, the break-up of families and so on. They also faced the sense of helplessness that grows in those who believe that they are powerless to change the way things are and that their individual acts are of no consequence.” Hawaiicommunityfoundation.org 2006 Annual Report They advocated to: Ask Hawai‘i’s people to undertake certain basic actions in their daily lives. • These actions would encourage sharing and caring, and would build community.• There would be a common set of actions so that everyone could gather strength and a sense of community from seeing each other participate. • The actions would be easy to do regardless of where people lived, what they did, or how much money or power they believed they possessed. • The group would provide a rallying point, a symbol and a call to action, to bring people together. While this group does not presume to define aloha, they believe the spirit of Aloha to include respect for others, for the land, and all that surrounds us, … SCRIPTURE To change the political structure by loving each other. If they needed a scripture to give credence to the truth of what they proposed, it could have been from 1 John. “Don’t just talk about being loved, love.” Christ’s never stopped loving us, even to the point where Government and Religious officials wanted him killed. God’s love inspires us to see what we can do to help. As children of God, we are part of God’s family business. Hanaied, our place in the family is secured, our confident in our relationship with God will not change, no matter what we do. We’re related, we are a part of each other. So, we can be unafraid to take action, to make mistakes, to take a risk, to live by faith, and to trust in God. 1 John is encouraging us to take our being loved by God to go out and love others. Simple to understand, but hard to do and a lot more profound than we think. APPLICATION God loves us completely and profoundly in Jesus. God calls us, adopts us, accepts us, forgives us and is gracious with us. How do we live, God’s love for us, with others? 1 John says to obey the commandments. This is how we get a feel for living in God’s ways. We try it God’s way, in our living of them. We obey, make mistakes, make accommodations, we make modifications, we learn the truth of God’s ways to the point where we don’t have to obey the commandments because they apart of the way we live, innately, as part of who we are. 1 John reassures us of our relationship with God by reminding us that we are children, who are growing, learning, not perfect, becoming, (vs18) and as being beloved (vs. 21) we live as part of a family where there is grace, love, forgiveness, patience and hope. Live Aloha’s suggestion could also be a good start of where to begin to live out our love for God with others.
CONCLUSION Live Aloha and 1 John gives us two reasons to living in loving ways. My friend was asking if they should take the vaccination shot for COVID. If I had finished this sermon, I would have told them, “What is the most loving thing that you could do, (for yourself, for your family, for your community and the people you work with, in regards to getting the vaccination shot?” I am feeling a little nostalgic today, I’m drawing on the role call scene on Hill Street Blues, where they have the morning briefings before they are sent out into the community. The Sarge tell them to “get out there and do it, and be safe”. Maybe I’m mixing in a Nike’s commercial in with this but it this how the author of 1 John would have wanted it. “Don’t over think love. It is simple enough to understand, just get out there and do it, and be safe.”
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SCRIPTURE: 1 John 3:1-7
TEXT: 2Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. THEME: We are children belonging to God’s family. INTRODUCTION In 1973, out on the street corners stood some nomadic looking people announcing the Second Coming of Christ. They called themselves ‘Children of God’. Their pamphlet made parallels between the star that announced Jesus’ birth with the present coming of the comet Kahoutek and the second coming of Christ. These dooms day prophets, predicted an Armageddon, and apocalyptic end to the world. Instilling fear as the motivation for people to change their lives, for all would perish, except for those who joined them as children of God. With this nugget of knowledge about Christ’s Coming, they alone would enjoyed the protection of the Father as his children and survive the destruction of the Earth. They unabashedly asked for donations while they proclaimed God’s wrath, like children, their theology was immature and self-serving. SCRIPTURE The author of 1 John, on the other hand, sees our relationship with God as a parent and child. But with Love so great that God calls us children, drawn into God’s self by love and into a covenantal adoption. God loves us ever more than we could love God. At first, our covenantal responsibility may seem like doing what is right. But our responsibility as children, is to be a kid. We can live in the now and not worry about the consequences. We can explore and discover God in what we do, the people we meet, in nature and in science. We can play, using our imaginations unbounded by decorum, unencumbered by social convention, freed from tradition, status, race, patriotism, privilege, wealth and power. Just play with playmates, trying new things and figuring out what works, discovering what’s out there and who God is. The description of a child gives us huge swatches of grace, in which we adults feel uncomfortable with. Adults want to control everything so we make boundaries, then fiddle with their legality to expand our freedoms. But what if there are no boundaries to loving God and loving our neighbor. In being children there are ‘oops’, ‘whoops’, and ‘aye yah’s’ in the family of God. Things break, feelings get hurt, our selfishness gets in the way. We want what others have, and our time frame centers around ourselves with no thought of what others need, or are doing, or even God’s timing in the matter. (I was at Safeway on Five Dollar Friday, picking up a few things and was ready to leave before the Poke was ready. I told Jann that I would come back for it later, when this guy I knew from before banged into my shopping cart. He rambled on in a senseless conversation, until I tried to politely excuse myself. When I finally did so…the poke was displayed. I recognize this as God’s timing.) We throw tantrums, complain and even cry as part of our growing into a matured child of God. Children grow up to be like their parents. Christians grow up and become images of what God is like. The world gets to see who God is through our relationship with God. Not just by all of the good we do, but also by what we do when we mess up. How we handle our divorce, what we do with the money we get from winning the lottery. Or how we deal with fame, or by not being recognized for our contributions. Our purity is not in sinlessness that we achieve on our own, but through the work of the Holy Spirit in us, through God’s love that forgives, and through a righteousness which God gives to us. We have a humble confidence in being God’s children. A purity in the way that God sees us, in our imperfection, our incompleteness, our potential as beloved children, in God’s image. Love blind to our waywardness, because who we are to God, is more important than the wrong we do. The opposite to being Children of God, is be lawless. Living as if there isn’t a parent God. Living orphaned all on our own, thinking that our actions have no consequences. Living outside of a relationship with God thinking that our actions or attitudes have no effect on God. Jesus shows us that this is not true and how to abide graciously with God. Abiding is not obeying, it has to do with living, dwelling with each other, living in each other’s spaces. This is a recipe for conflict, as with any relationship. Covenant is our goal with God, and is accomplished through wrestling with grace, participating in the work of forgiven and working at our love for each other. Let no one deceive you, our status as children of God is a working relationship of growth, resilient, not threatened by sin, fortified with forgiveness and strengthened by God’s grace. APPLICATION Children make mistakes as part of their growing and learning and still belong to God’s family. How does our sense of belonging help us to grow in God’s family? We live belonging to God’s family, related and heirs to what God has. God’s love for us accepts us as children as our relationship gets lived out. We can live with God as our parent. As children our job is to grow, learn, discover, explore, try and succeed. Success does not come without failure, so it is all right trying and fail because we are not expected to be perfect at everything. The more we try, the more we learn and the more we grow. We are influenced by God’s goodness, by God’s creativity, by God’s attention to detail and by God’s intricate designs found across the universe. As we learn God’s ways, we discover truth. God becomes involved in our lives, our decisions, our ventures, our navigating of relationships and situations. God is our parent listening and answering our prayers. As we learn God’s wisdom, we can see how the commandments have their benefits and God’s desire for what is best for us. As God’s children, we go where God goes. God brings us to the places of injustice. We sit in the court rooms, we stand in the neighborhoods, we sing in the streets. As God’s children we bring God with us where ever we are, in the classroom, in our office, into our families, to Costco. The world does not understand us because they don’t know God. When you follow Jesus, you seem a little strange to the world. Happy but strange. We walk to a different beat; our hearts lead us in different directions. Relationships become more important than amassing treasure. We feel uncomfortable in the Black Friday greed frenzy. I was standing at a Long’s display with a prized product on the end cap, when everyone started grabbing at it, I grabbed one too even though I didn’t need it. When I came to my senses, I put it back. CONCLUSION The comet Kahoutek came and went, but we were still here to face Y2K and other predictions of the end of the world. They revised their prophetic message to say that Jesus was on the tail of the comet and had come as predicted but not in the way “we” think. Then that threat, their predictions, fears and those children of God faded away. But we remain. One of my goals as a parent was to be there for my children when they needed help. That they could come to me, no matter what happened. Last week one of the kids that grew up in our church called me to ask a question. After all of these years. So, like a parent, I listened and gave my best answer. Being God’s child, growing, learning, playing, experimenting, imagining, we can be a little like how God is, and share the wonder of God with others. SCRIPTURE: 1 John 1:1—2:2
TEXT: 3we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. THEME: We live in fellowship with God. INTRODUCTION There is a theological problem, troubling the church at the writing of 1 John. Set about the end of the first Century, there is a growing number of believers who see the flesh as the breeding ground for Evil and in their minds, they cannot fathom of how God, who is holy and pure, could corrupt divinity in the trappings of a human being. Urges, passions, temptations, desires, hunger, lust are unbecoming of the divine. So, to accommodate their disdain of the flesh, they invented a Jesus who remains fully divine, and only acts at being human, pretending to suffer on the cross and die. This is the context of John’s letter as he calls us back to the ‘beginnings of Creation’ and the beginnings of the Gospel of John’ and reminds us of the Creator God who becomes the incarnation of the Word. Their humanness has betrayed them and cannot be trusted. How could Jesus be more powerful than they are and keep divinity and humanity in balance? They emasculate God of humanity to keep God holy. If they succeed in keeping God as a tourist among us, pretending to be local, then there is no hope in their Jesus for us to be challenged to live in ways, other than what we are already living. But if Jesus becomes a kanaka like us, then Jesus challenges us to live in imaginative, creative expressions of our relationship with God. SCRIPTURE John opens with “From the beginning”, and sets the church straight with what they have heard about Jesus, seen with their own eyes, and touched with their own hands. The living incarnate God is in the life of the church. This community that believes in Jesus is different from the society it is planted in. They enjoy a relationship with God as their Father, with Jesus as their sibling, and with each other as family. They live in ways that Jesus can be heard, seen and felt. They reflect God’s ways. They are not perfect, but that they are willing explore, venture out, and engage with others. In their relationship with God, they find space to admit when they have caused hurt, ask for forgiveness and forgive others. The enjoyment they have for God is reflected in the way they enjoy each other. The love they have experienced from God is reflected in the way they love each other. But if they do something contrary to the will of God, God’s love for them is abundant enough to forgive them, just as we have seen, in Jesus’ dealings, as he lived among us. APPLICATION The purpose of the incarnation is to reveal who God is to us. Jesus shows us what is possible as we live in relationship with God. Fellowship is to live with enjoyment of God and with each other. How do we live in fellowship with God? God is tangible to us through Jesus. Although by the time of the writing of 1 John, there probably are no living eye witnesses of Jesus still alive. But the examples of Jesus are carried by lives that have been transformed. The Teachings of Jesus are being taught by those who have been taught by their parents, mentors, teachers, rabbis, and in their synagogues. And the touch of Jesus continues by those who participate in the mission of Jesus, caring for others, healing, advocating for the marginalized, helping those in need, paying attention to those who are being ignored, and by being stewards of the gifts God has given, using them in the way God would want them used. God is real through Jesus’ life ministry death and resurrection. This fellowship with God, does not degrade God but demonstrates an extraordinary love for us and invites us to live compelling ways. The dynamics of fellowship with God, touches all aspects of our lives. We are not alone. We cannot escape into dark hidden holes away from God. God journeys with us and sits in the ashes with us, ready to have fellowship with us. The image of an all Divine God untouched by humanity is an image of perfection. We can aspire to be perfect, but we will never achieve it. But the incarnate Jesus, occupying our human rawness, has an abundance of grace to cover our good and not so good intensions, to keep us in the fold. Our lives are in process, a journey, an adventure of faith. It is in fellowship with God and others who are traveling along the way. God is constantly being involved in our lives. We experience fellowship with God in all aspects of our lives; as God is with us in our fears, joys and anxieties. Fellowship is what makes the incarnation so important. It is our connection with God as God connects with us. The fellowship in the fox holes, the fellowship as we march together for justice, the fellowship together as we pray, worship, lament, celebrate and sing. Fellowship with God feeds into the social nature of being human. That is why COVID-19 is so hard to irradiate, it is impossible to keep us apart from each other. We have to live by an alternate truth, have brazen disregard of facts, and even risk death to be together. Just like our incarnate God in Jesus. CONCLUSION Just because we can’t understand something it doesn’t make it not true. Look how long it took human kind to conceive of a round world instead of flat. Or how about the earth being a part of a solar system around the sun instead of the planets and sun revolving around the earth. Sometimes our understanding of God is limited by our lack of imagination. God’s incarnation in Jesus has many unfolding dimensions to it that still unfold for us. These are connecting points intersecting our lives, as we hear God’s voice speaking in our hearts, or see clearly through God’s eyes of compassion, or reach out to touch another person, to say, ‘you are loved’. God is not one step removed, God moves towards us into deeper fellowship with us; from brokenness to wholeness, in acceptance, in forgiveness, meeting us in our fears, worry, anxiety, suffering, loneliness, inhabiting our church, our marriage, our singleness, being with us at work, at play, in health, in families, in mission, in life, at meals, in joy, to motivate us, in our timing, by belonging, in our accomplishments, at communion, in community, in our politics, in our neighborhoods, and moving us from guilt to grace. The incarnation is about fellowship with God and each other. SCRIPTURE: John 20:11-18
TEXT: 18aMary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; THEME: Redefined relation with Jesus. INTRODUCTION This is the second part of the account of the resurrection found in the Gospel of John. The first part from verse 1 to 10 are filled with emotions, a wide range of intense feelings, but mostly an inconsolable grief. In John’s gospel we witness the resurrection through the emotions of Mary. But a key perspective was given by Dr. Liew during the last PSR CELT class, where he talked about the Centurion’s proclamation at the crucifixion of Jesus where at his death, Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me” and dies. Dr. Liew asks, “What did the centurion see that would make him draw the conclusion, ’This truly is the Son of God?” He says God does not revel in our suffering. Jesus was experiencing excruciation pain and suffering, so much so he felt abandoned, alone, forgotten. The Centurion heard Jesus’ Prayer and witnessed the answer to that prayer as God takes his life to end the suffering. A crucifixion death usually takes 6 days, but after 6 hours Jesus prays and upon hearing Jesus’ cry, God responds with mercy saying “its enough” and ends the suffering. This is the miracle that makes the Centurion believe. SCRIPTURE Mary’s grief is compounded because not only has Jesus died, but his body has been stolen. Disrespected, no proper burial according to their culture and everything Jesus believed in. Insulted, angered, bewildered, sorrowful all at the same time. Those knuckle heads, Peter and John were no help running around like chickens. “Good! Go home!” She stands out side of the tomb, building up the courage to look inside. When at last she bends down to look inside, through her tears she see two angels sitting where the body of Jesus was lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They ask, “What is the reason for your crying?” All she could think about was where Jesus’ body was. In desperation she says, “Where is his body?” Can you feel the intensity of her desperation increasing but now it is Jesus standing next to her who asks, “Why are you crying? What is the reason for your grief? There is a new story to understand, there is a new story to hold onto, There is a new story to redefine your future” She assumes he is a gardener, and with even more desperation says, “ If you have carried Jesus’ body away, show me, no questions asked, I can take it from here.” Then Jesus says to her, “It’s enough. You have suffered this grief long enough, it has consumed you. The reason for your grief has is here, the body of Jesus is here, resurrected from the death you grieve, by the power of God.” And Jesus calls her back into relationship with himself, by calling her name, “Mary”. “Rabbouni!”, She quickly turns and enters back into her student teacher relationship, but Jesus says to her, “our relationship can not be exactly as it once had been. I am different, I will ascend to be with the Father and so our relationship will be redefined.” “It not you, it’s me”. Jesus is Lord and ascending to the Father. Her relationship with God is being redefined to Father, as Jesus’ God is also her God. There is a whole new orientation of Mary’s relationship with Jesus, with her relationship with God and with who she is as a daughter of God. Jesus is Lord and her siblings are disciples. She leaves the garden, transformed, to tell the Peter and John, that she has seen the Lord. APPLICATION At the resurrection Jesus is made alive again. But Mary’s relationship with Jesus can no longer be as student and teacher. We imagine what Jesus is like, and form our relationship with Jesus around those images. How does the image of the resurrected Jesus add to who Jesus is to us and redefine our relationship? For Mary there was a shift from Rabbouni to Lord. From human to eternal. From fan and super star to, resurrected, heavenly. Deeper reverence, profound love, accepted, called, empowered. Whose version of the resurrection story would you want to hear, Mary’s or John’s? “Mary woke us, early in the morning, Peter and I ran to the tomb, I beat him there. I looked inside, Peter went in. I did too, I believe what Mary told us is true. They have taken the body of Jesus away. There wasn’t anything more for us to do there, so we went home.” Thank goodness Jesus had women disciples who stuck around to try to figure out what was happening even though there was not plausible explanation. Our relationship with Jesus is familiar at first, and then it becomes complicated when it is revealed that he is not just human like us, but holy. Jesus’ divinity comes with hopes, confidences, promises and certainties that out weighs our fears. We have a sense of Being love, accepted and belonging to God. Jann and I have been binge watching TV. We watched an investigation into the Hick’ babies taken at birth and sold for adoption around the the 1950’s. This one 70 year old was raised by adopted parents who never made him feel accepted. He had to fight for everything in that family and was always excluded by his parents and their children. When he was able to meet a half sister these investigators discovered, they fell into each other’s embrace knowing that they belonged together. This is what being love by God is like. Finding each other knowing that we belong together. This is how Mary’s relationship with Jesus gets redefined. Our relationship with God is for fellowship, Our relationship with God is for participations in each other’s life, Our relationship with God is for enjoyment, challenges, growth, participation in Mission. Our relationship with God makes a positive difference in other people’s lives, Our relationship with God helps our communities to grow, mature, correct injustices, move forward, Learn to love, evolve and enjoy each other, and accept diversity instead of homogeneity. Having everything and everyone all the same is over rated. My doctor has put me on a No Carb Diet. Yes another diet. And this ‘life style’ change is just like it sounds, no carbohydrates. No sugar, little variety. It is like Keto, or South Beach or Flat Belly Diet. Added to intermitted fasting, which I sort of do. I am craving heterogeneity in my foods. The strain we are having in our society, admitting our history of enslaving, dehumanizing, and disrespecting treatment of Africans is God’s movement to bring awareness of the evil we have participated in. We now have a chance to be God’s agents for justice, dignity, reconciliation and reparations in these relationships. Evil pushes back against God’s liberation and healing. Evil finds other targets to blame for their fears and commits acts of cowardice upon the unarmed and vulnerable. These attempts to suppress only cause people to rise up and display our diverse majority over, small minded sameness. Evil uses words like heathen, menace, Red, Black, Slave, Communist, Socialist, immigrant, to justify their treatment of others but in the resurrection we use words like sibling, welcomes, differently abled, beloved, inclusion, accommodate, valued, and community. CONCLUSION We all look for evidence of God’s love for us. Answered prayers reveal God’s merciful heart. Jesus among us reveals how we can live in relationship with God. Jesus resurrected establishes a new reality for us that takes us from worrying about death to living in loving ways. The suffering we have endured or inflicted is enough, resurrection, means we can get on with living in a different way with God and each other. |
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April 2024
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