Is this the way it's supposed to be?

PEACE SUNDAY

Isaiah 40:1-11 NRSV
1 Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. 3 A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. 5Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." 6 A voice says, "Cry out!" And I said, "What shall I cry?" All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. 8 The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever. 9 Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, "Here is your God!" 10 See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. 11 He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.


In Bible Study this week we read chapters 22-24 in Exodus. Among many other things God told the people of Israel these things, which are re-stated over and over again throughout the Old Testament: 21Don't mistreat or oppress an immigrant, because you were once immigrants in the land of Egypt. 22Don't treat any widow orphan badly. 23If you do treat them badly and they cry out to me, you can be sure that I'll hear their cry. 24I'll be furious, and I'll kill you with the sword. Then your wives will be widows, and your children will be orphans.
25If you lend money to my people who are poor among you, don't be a creditor and charge them interest. 26If you take a piece of clothing from someone as a security deposit, you should return it before the sun goes down. 27His clothing may well be his only blanket to cover himself. What else will that person have to sleep in? And if he cries out to me, I'll listen, because I'm compassionate.

In those same passages it becomes clear that individuals can only prosper as long as the community is stable and working in balance. The laws allow for restitution, not retribution. There was no such thing as a giant lawsuit – the value of any item, injury or damage was known in advance.

In Exodus 22, in the middle of this list of laws and punishments God promises the people of Israel what sounds like the ultimate peace of heart. “25If you worship the LORD your God, the LORD will bless your bread and your water. I'll take sickness away from you, 26and no woman will miscarry or be infertile in your land. I'll let you live a full, long life.“ If you worship me, if you obey me, this is the peace of heart that will come again upon the people of Israel. Long healthy lives. Healthy babies and many of them. No enemies to worry about.

But . . .the leaders of Israel ignored those laws and because they did, because greed and the lust for power replaced the kind of balanced community the laws provided for, the entire nation was lost. They didn’t simply suffer military defeat as they had every other time they’d “done what was evil in the sight of God.” This time their temple was destroyed, the crops were burned in the fields, all the wealth of the nation was taken away and the leadership – the nobles and priests – were taken away into captivity. Their children are taken away and raised as Babylonians. Those who were left behind had to scratch out a living as best they could, for the bulk of their wealth – their crops, their herds, the very fish from the waters of Israel – went to support their overlords. All went to Babylon.

Israel has been punished for their pride and their disobedience. They have lost far more than just their wealth and power, status and prestige. They have lost their homeland and their children. They fear the loss of their language, their culture, their very identity as a people. They had lost hope. Psalm 137 makes their feelings very clear,

“By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked us for mirth,
saying “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”

There was no peace in their hearts.

And now God says to Isaiah, “Comfort my people. Tell them the time of their imprisonment is over. Tell them to have peace in their hearts. Tell them they need have no more worries or concerns.” They will be returned to their home. They will liberated, even as they were liberated from slavery in Egypt. They will be returned to the land promised to their ancestors.

In a recent Christian Century magazine, Bill Goettler, assistant dean of ministerial studies at Yale Divinity School and co-pastor of First Presbyterian Church of New Haven told a story about a homeless man he has known for a couple of years. Danny slept in the doorway of a local business, careful to leave before anyone arrived for work in the morning so he didn’t frighten them. He could be seen around town selling newspapers, washing windows and collecting things to recycle. He worked hard to get the few dollars he needed for food. Sometimes he’d come around to the church asking for a bus pass or a few dollars or some food. And whenever he saw Goettler, he’d say “Reverend, Is this the way it’s supposed to be?”

The short answer is NO! It’s not supposed to be this way. It’s only this way when the leaders forget in whose name they are leading, who put them in positions of power and trust. It’s only this way when society becomes unbalanced. When it becomes clear to everyone that “winning” is more important than fairness or compassion or mercy or what’s good for the community. When a candidate for president claims that people who are poor and jobless have only themselves to blame. When the most popular TV shows feature groups of people placed in a difficult environment and, rather than being told to create the best community they can, are encouraged to manipulate each other, to lie, cheat and steal in order to win a large sum of money.

There is no peace when people have no place to sleep, no job or hope of one, no way to support themselves or their families. There is no peace when the wealthy have the power of life and death over the poor.

When Israel behaved this way God paid attention. God promised Israel more than just peace of heart if they worshipped their Lord. God promised destruction if they oppressed the powerless among them. “23If you do treat them badly and they cry out to me, you can be sure that I'll hear their cry. 24I'll be furious, and I'll kill you with the sword. Then your wives will be widows, and your children will be orphans.”

I think God means it. And I think God’s promise to bring destruction upon those who oppress the powerless is beginning to come true here. Maybe destruction won’t come at the point of a sword but when I look at the news I am beginning to see an upswelling of rebellion against that lack of compassion and mercy that is a plague upon our nation. There’s the non-violent Occupy movement, of course, but there are other examples of civil disobedience that are as wonderful as they are unexpected.

In Atlanta this week, Chase Bank foreclosed upon a home and deputies were sent with a moving van and a writ of eviction. This is never an easy job for the police When they arrived and saw the homeowners they called their supervisor and said, “We’re not going to do this.” They could not in good conscience remove 103 year old Vida Lee Hall and her 83 year old daughter from the house they had called home for over 50 years. Their call was passed all the way up the chain of command to Sheriff Jackson, who backed them up in their refusal to obey the writ of eviction and called them back to their station. I first saw this story Wednesday on MSNBC, where Laurence O’Donnell said “Laws alone cannot make a Just society Laws must be tempered with mercy. We have a more just society because Sheriff Jackson of Atlanta followed his conscience instead of the law.” I think it is only right that Sheriff Jackson and his deputies chose to protect the powerless instead of serving the wealthy. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that those deputies went home that night with peace in their hearts.

Marine Corps Lance Corporal Scott Olson, a veteran of two tours in Iraq, appeared on the Rachel Maddow show on Thursday. You may know that he is the man who suffered a serious head injury at Occupy Oakland when the police were trying to move the protestors from their location. His story became the motivating force that reinvigorated the movement around the country and inspired even more people to actively participate. During that interview he said, “I want more than anything to see more people get involved. You can't effect change sitting at home. The occupy movement is about coming together and learning each others stories and creating community.”

And did you know that the Occupy movement is changing focus? As more cities are moving the Occupiers out of parks and other pubic spaces, people are now occupying properties where, for example, a single mother and her children are about to be evicted because, as in so many other cases, the bank wouldn’t negotiate her mortgage payments. Instead of occupying public property for all the 99%, they are occupying private property to help individual members of the community. This isn’t new. Communities did the same thing during the Great Depression, standing with their neighbors against the bankers.

When the people of Israel behaved as community, when they obeyed the laws that were intended to keep their society in balance, when they cared for the powerless among them with mercy and compassion, they had peace. Not just political and military peace, but peace that comes from within. When the people of Israel had this peace of heart, the kind of peace that is one of the blessings showered upon them by God, then they were free.

A friend of mine recently shared this quote from the Dalai Lama: “The basic foundation of humanity is compassion and love. This is why, if even a few individuals simply try to create mental peace and happiness within themselves and act responsibly and kind-heartedly towards others, they will have a positive influence in their community.”

Author and Holocaust Survivor Eli Wiesel said, “Peace is our gift to each other.”

The deputies in Georgia gave peace when they chose compassion over blind obedience to the law. The Occupiers seek peace by bringing international attention to the plight of the powerless, calling for the kind of economic justice that is rooted in compassion and mercy. As Christians we are required to love our neighbor, to bring that peace that surpasses all understanding into the lives we touch as we go about our daily business. This love, this peace-giving, is the form of worship that the prophet Micah declared God most desires of us, more than thousands of rams or rivers of oil or clouds of incense, but rather to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God. Blessed be the God of Israel!

Back to School Sunday

Wisdom 6:12 – 19 (Common English Bible)
Wisdom is bright and unfading. She readily appears to those who love her. She’s found by those who keep seeking after her. She makes herself known even in advance to those who desire her with all their hearts. Someone who wakens before dawn to look for her will find her already sitting at the door. Taking wisdom to heart is the way to bring your thinking to maturity. The one who can’t sleep at night because he’s consumed with thinking about her will soon be free from worry.

She herself goes about looking for those who are worthy of her. She graciously makes herself known to them as they travel. She comes to them in each of the ideas that they think. The real beginning of wisdom is to desire instruction with all your heart. Love for instruction expresses itself in careful reflection. If you love Wisdom, you will keep her laws. If you are attentive to her laws, you can be assured that you will live forever. If you live forever, you will be near to God.



The reading I used today comes from the Wisdom of Solomon, which is not found in many of the bibles we have at home. It is one of those books only found in study bibles (and Catholic and Orthodox bibles) in that section between the Old and New Testaments known as the apocrypha or deuterocanonical books. The bishops who decided which books should go into the Bible decided that these should available to students of the Bible because we can learn from them but that we shouldn’t consider them to be authoritative.

The Wisdom of Solomon is sort of a continuation of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. A large part of it is narrated by a person known as Wisdom and contains sayings about how to live with joy and obedience to God. We first meet Wisdom in Proverbs where she describe herself in this way:

The LORD created me at the beginning of his way, before his deeds long in the past.
I was formed in ancient times, at the beginning, before the earth was.
When there were no watery depths, I was brought forth,
when there were no springs with water.
Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I was brought forth;
before God made the earth and the fields or the first of the dry land.
I was there when he established the heavens,
when he marked out the horizon on the deep sea,
when he thickened the clouds above,
when he secured the fountains of the deep,
when he set a limit for the sea, so the water couldn't go beyond his command,
when he marked out the earth's foundations.
Common English Bible (2011-06-15). CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha (Kindle Locations 28122-28143).

Just FYI, Wisdom is always referred to as a woman because the word meaning wisdom is feminine in Hebrew and Greek. English words, of course, don’t have gender.


This concludes the educational portion of the message.


I say that sort of tongue in cheek because as we all know education and wisdom are not the same thing. Today we celebrate the beginning of the school year, the beginning of a new season of education. The children will learn a lot this year. They’ll learn new things about words and numbers and science and maybe history and languages . . . and I don’t know what all. Their teachers will do their very best to teach them the things they need to know, the things the government and the school system say the children need to learn in order to pass the required tests.

I know that most teachers would much rather teach them how to think, how to reason their way through situations, how to think critically about problems and issues. Most teachers are be thrilled if in addition to teaching their students how to pass tests they also manage teach them to be moral and ethical and wise.

The real beginning of wisdom is to desire instruction with all your heart. Love for instruction expresses itself in careful reflection. . If you love Wisdom, you will keep her laws. If you are attentive to her laws, you can be assured that you will live forever. If you live forever, you will be near to God.

If you love wisdom you will keep her laws, you will live forever, you will be near to God. This sounds familiar. This is kingdom of heaven language. The one who loves Wisdom loves God, because Wisdom is of God. The one who loves Wisdom and therefore God, will do justice and love kindness, will show mercy and compassion, will care for the widow and orphan and everyone who has no one to protect them from the oppressor.

I know, I say these things all the time yet I don’t always say what loving the widow and the orphan and all the other powerless people really entails.

For the last two years we have been offering a program called the Treasure Box. A Treasure Box contains about 25 pounds of good quality frozen food at a very reasonable cost. It is supposed to feed a family of 4 for one week and an elderly person for an entire month. Unfortunately, Treasure Box has been losing so much money that they can’t continue to offer this service. The very last Treasure Boxes will be distributed in September. Most of our people were very upset to hear this – they simply don’t know what they’re going to do. Some have been sent to us by social workers or the school system. Many are retired or on disability. One has 6 foster kids and 3 of his own to feed. We feel terrible and we feel responsible to find a way to help these people. We’re going to see if we can get involved with a similar program between now and October so we can keep serving our neighbors.

One of the people who gets a Treasure Box every month is Garth, a very nice elderly man who has the kind of physical difficulties that make me think maybe he’s had a stroke. He was relieved to hear that we’re going to try to continue helping him. He’s terrified that the government is going to take away his Social Security and Medicare. He’s angry that the government doesn’t seem to care about people like him.

The Hebrew prophets told the government of their own times that if they didn’t care for the poor and powerless they would fall – and they did. Dr. Jeremiah Wright said the same thing to the U.S. government in his infamous “God damns America” sermon. He wasn’t alone in this kind of thinking. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was scheduled to preach a sermon titled “Why America May Go to Hell” the Sunday after his assassination. According to Dr. Cornel West of Princeton University in a recent NY Times article titled “Dr King Weeps From His Grave,” Dr. King said that his “dream of a more democratic America had become “a nightmare” owing to the persistence of “racism, poverty, militarism and materialism.” Dr. King called America a “sick society.”’

Forty plus years later America is still sick and suffering from the causes of Dr. King’s nightmares.
Racism: It isn’t dead, it’s just changed the way it works. Schools are more segregated today than they were in 1970. Racially based hate crimes are on the increase. The prison population is disproportionately comprised of young men of color.
Poverty: The gap between the rich and poor is greater than it has ever been. Thanks to the greed of banks and multinational corporations more families – 2 parents plus children – are homeless now than at any time since the Great Depression and it doesn’t look like those numbers are going to decrease any time soon.
Militarism: We are engaged in two wars, and have been at war for nearly ten years. You have all seen the news stories about the dire straits way too many military families are in while the military industrial complex reports record profit.
Materialism: Corporations are people now – at least they are according to the Supreme Court and some candidates for the presidency. We are a nation living on plastic, bombarded with the temptation to buy online, on TV, on the phone and on impulse. A frighteningly large percentage of us are one pink slip or bad diagnosis away from financial disaster. I won’t even mention that lately some Americans have losing rights at a scary pace – union members and poor women and –

Do I need to point out that the people who suffer most as a result of racism and materialism and militarism and poverty are the widows and the orphans and the otherwise powerless?
The very same people who have been denied justice from forever –
the same ones that God specifically and repeatedly told the leaders to treat with justice and mercy and compassion or bad things would happen.

Yesterday Garth said he is afraid that if the government keeps taking away from the poor that people will take up arms, that there will be a violent uprising, a revolution. I believe a revolution is exactly what we need. According to Cornel West we need to make “a revolution in our priorities, a re-evaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.”

There have been surveys lately that indicate the “religious right” believes church should have a larger role in politics. Well, I’m not part of the religious right, but I believe that too.
I believe that the Church needs to stand up for the justice that is denied the poor, the widows, the orphans, the bullied and the powerless.
I believe that we must sign petitions, march, register to vote and tell everyone around us to register to vote, write blogs and letters to the editor and letters to our elected officials.
I believe we must stand with the Hebrew prophets and with Dr. King, and tell our government to love Wisdom and to love her laws, to love justice.
I believe we need to remind them what happened to Israel and to Judah when the prophets were ignored –

and just to be clear, the prophets were not fussing over how to properly keep all the laws in Torah. They weren’t worried about written down rules and how to interpret them. They weren’t lawyers. Some of them weren’t very well educated. But they were lovers of Wisdom. They were prophets. Their job was to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. They were concerned for the poor, the hungry, the sick, the homeless. They preached that everybody, but especially the leaders of the nation, need to act with justice and mercy and compassion and love to all persons, but especially to the oppressed.


We need to do that.
We need to do that because if we do not stand with the least of our brothers and sisters, we are not Christian.
We need to do that because if we do not love even the most unlovable,
we are not Christian.
I don’t know what we would be, but we would not be Christian.
We would most certainly not be lovers of Wisdom and of her laws.

Wisdom is bright and unfading. She readily appears to those who love her. She’s found by those who keep seeking after her. . . If you love Wisdom, you will keep her laws. If you are attentive to her laws, you can be assured that you will live forever. If you live forever, you will be near to God.

Let’s live forever.
Let’s be near to God.
Let’s seek Holy Wisdom.

Love is an Action Word

Luke 10:25-37
25Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” 28And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” 29But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

30Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ 36Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”


Every time I read this story I struggle with trying to figure out a way to make it clear just how impossible this scenario would seem to the people listening to Jesus. In our world, the enemy is different for each generation. For the Jews, the Samaritans have been the enemy for hundreds of years. They were a despised minority whose land lay in between two Jewish nations, Galilee and Judah. They were relatives who didn’t worship right, who didn’t come to the temple, who had scriptures that were not exactly the same. As far as the Jews were concerned, Samaritans were untouchable, unclean – like lepers only without the possibility of ever healing. And the Samaritans knew how much the Jews despised them. After a priest and a Levite went by, the idea that a Samaritan would stop to help was just impossible. It would be like . . . well, that’s where I started. Not being able to come up with an adequate comparison. Maybe an undocumented Mexican coming to the aid of one of the Minute Men guarding the border? Or a black helping a member of the Aryan nation? But then for the story to have the same effect, it would have to be told to an audience of Minute Men, or members of the Aryan nation . We just really can’t quite get it the same way Jesus’ audience would have heard it.

Once again I found the study questions in the Green Bible provocative. One of those questions pointed out “Those listening to Jesus would have considered the Samaritans the scum of the earth. Yet the Samaritan is the one who lived out God’s commandment to show love and mercy. What does this suggest about power and justice?”

In terms of justice and power, the point of the story is not so much that a stranger helped a stranger, or even that an enemy helped an enemy, but that a member of a much hated minority helped a member of the group that oppressed. As in so many of the stories Jesus tells, the person with the least status and power is behaving in a way that makes him superior to those who out rank him in the eyes of the world. The Samaritan helps the Jew. The poor widow gives her last coin to the temple. In each of these stories, the last is first. In each of these cases, we see the way it is in God’s kingdom – exactly the opposite of the way it is in the world we’re used to inhabiting.

The justice we see in the actions of the Good Samaritan is like a homeless man finding and returning a fat wallet and refusing a reward. We’re surprised, first that he didn’t steal anything, then that he refused the reward. This surprises us nearly as much as Jesus’ audience would have been surprised at the Samaritan helping the man on the road. I mean, each one of us would certainly return the wallet and take no reward for doing what is right. But for a homeless guy to do this is so surprising it makes the news! No one expects justice to be done by the lowly. But here it is clearly the despised Samaritan, who worships wrongly and reads the wrong scriptures and rejects the Law, who acts with love and practices justice.

In a recent article on the internet, Pastor Mary Jo Bradshaw of North Long Beach Christian Church challenged the church to show love for a group we often think of as “the least.” The entire article is going to be included in our newsletter this month. But I want to share with you today part of what she said. “In cities and suburbs and rural areas all across the world, "street gangs" are a concern. We're losing our kids, and we feel helpless to do something about it. The thing to remember, though, is that they aren't just "our" kids; they're God's kids. And God weeps at every senseless death, every ruined life, every fractured family. Locking them up isn't helping. "Three Strikes" isn't helping. Fear surely isn't helping. We have to love them back into the arms of God, and love is verb. Love is action. Love is something we have to do.”

The Green Bible asks two more questions. First, how do we see Jesus’ response to the lawyer in terms of the interconnectedness of all life? And, how do we show mercy to the ‘enemy’ of the environment and humanity?

You have to understand that Jesus was asking the lawyer for no less than a complete change of heart. “Lawyer” meant someone who was expert in the laws of Moses, the laws that governed the life of every Jew and the nations of Judah and Galilee. He was asking the lawyer to do something as difficult as when he asked that other young man to give up all his wealth. He was asking the lawyer to put aside all the history he’d learned about other people, all the specific laws that governed his interactions with non-Jews, and live by those two commandments that are the basis for all the other laws.

I think what Mary Jo says is really relevant here “We have to remember that the kids in street gangs are not just “our” kids, they’re God’s kids.” The lawyer was a Jew, but now had to look at the Samaritan as one of God’s children, plain and simple. As the neighbor, whom he was required to love. And once he could see the despised hereditary enemy as his neighbor, as his equal in God’s eyes, it wouldn’t be as much of a step to see all kinds of people as equal. No matter what their perceived place in society, the lawyer, if he is truly to “go and do likewise” will reach out with love and justice to every person he encounters. He will help the oppressor, the Roman soldier, as readily as a poor Jewish widow. He would begin to act with love without discriminating between persons. He would become a neighbor to all persons regardless of religion, station or nation. He would become a neighbor to all persons regardless of how they had treated him in the past, regardless of any history they might have together personally or because of their political, social or religious differences.

So how does this relate to Creation Care as Justice? In this story, loving the neighbor is demonstrated by helping someone who has been injured by robbers. The Samaritan didn’t waste time chasing down the robbers or looking for soldiers to catch and punish them. The attack was old news. The important thing, the critical thing, was to save the one who had been injured. To clean up his wounds, and bandage him and make sure he had someone to care for him until he was back on his feet.

So we show mercy to those who have damaged the world – which would include most of us, I suppose. I doubt any of us are completely sinless when it comes to damaging our ecosystems. We probably haven’t personally cut down a rainforest or a filled in a swamp, but we each have a responsibility for the condition our planet is in right now. I have been guilty of wanting to blame the big corporations and the world bank for a lot of eco-damage around the world. But rather than looking for someone to blame or passing laws with which to punish the perpetrators, we can act with mercy. We will show mercy by doing love in its most difficult form – we will forgive, as God forgives us. We will stop worrying about the old news, the damage that’s already done, and move forward.

We simply concentrate on cleaning up the damage, healing the earth so we can actively love the neighbor. On digging wells where they are needed so people can water their crops. On developing and using more eco-friendly ways of producing power and food and everything else that we depend on. I’m not saying that everyone needs to go totally green and organic and all that. Simply that, if we are to love our neighbor, and do justice as the Samaritan did, then we will treat all the earth and its creatures with love, as God intended us to do from the beginning.

To do this, we’ll have to change our entire outlook on living, as the lawyer in this story would have to. We’ll have to change our perception of who the neighbor is, and learn how to act in love in every circumstance. We will have to open our hearts to the enemy, and to new ways of caring for each other, that we might do as God requires us to do and love our neighbor as our ourselves.

I want to share with you a note I received in an email this morning that speaks so well to today’s passage. (This note will also be in our newsletter but you get to hear it first.)


Dear Church,

Away with acceptance and toleration! You probably think I've popped a cork by saying this. But someone must.

Sorry, no popped cork just basic Christianity. Jesus never told his followers or church to be acceptable or tolerant of other perspectives, beliefs or ideas -- even ideas that are in contention with his. He never said to argue or defend God's truth whatever the cost may be.

No, Jesus said that if you are my follower then love your enemy, do good to those who persecute you, love your neighbor and, if there are other teachers teaching different truths, let them be.

Somewhere along the way we went wrong when we swallowed the idea hook, line, and sinker, that to be acceptable and tolerant of others is enough. We have congratulated ourselves for our bigness and broadmindedness while completely missing the mark.

To accept others or to be tolerant of others has never been the point of Jesus' teachings. He said, people of faith -- love! He said, church -- love! Away with acceptance and toleration. In with love, God's love, for everyone.

As powerful in the 21st century as it was in the 1st, such love will transform, unify, and give direction for the church today. If you want something that is not just a temporary fix, if you want something with ultimacy, it doesn't get any better than this. Let none of us settle for anything less than Jesus and God's love for all!

Lovingly,
Ron Degges, President DHM

So let’s ask God to create in us a new heart, that we might teach the world to love.




* Copied with permission from the blog “Jacobs Well Christian Church”, a “virtual church“ started by Pastor Mary Jo Bradshaw of North Long Beach Christian Church.