Tag Archives: Wholelness

Loving Like Jesus

Living in the Spirit

July 9, 2022

Scripture Reading: Luke 10:25-37

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He 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.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’ –Luke 10:25-28

These words spill easily off the lips of most of us who were raised in a church. I wonder if we know what they mean. What does Jesus imply when he says, do this, and you will live. Some may read that as the promise of eternal life. We might think that if we love others, we will live in a society that protects one another. The Greek word, zaó, translated here as life means to experience God’s gift of life, emphatically, and in the Messianic sense, to enjoy real life, i. e. to have true life and worthy of the name — active, blessed, endless in the kingdom of God*. This life is not just something to look forward to in the future. It was gifted to us by God when he breathed the breath of life** into each of us.

What we do with the life we are given is the purpose of the above scripture. Life is not life if it does not answer the command to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. For some reason, I fear, we have failed in understanding that each and all of God’s creations are loveable. As I compare the backgrounds of the young men who have been accused of recent mass shootings, I keep seeing people who do not love themselves. We can identify them at very young ages. We can teach people how to love themselves. We can teach children how to share their love rather than make fun of someone they do not understand. Before that can happen, we adults, need to learn the lesson too. Need to learn to love ourselves, want the very best for ourselves, and want the very best for all others. We must model love for all our children. The best role model I know for refining our ability to love is Jesus, the Christ. Now is a great time to read through the gospels and search out Jesus’s love in action.

Prayer: Lord, show us again how to love like you until we get it right. Amen.

*https://biblehub.com/greek/2198.htm

See Genesis 2:7

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Loving People to Life

Epiphany

February 22, 2020

Scripture Reading: Matthew 17:1-9
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’ And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, ‘Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’

If you had been a first century citizen of what was once know as Israel then split in two, how do you think you would have responded to Jesus? Would you have identified him as a good man, best friend, great teacher, positive example, person with special powers, healer, wonderful storyteller, excellent leader, inspired prophet? At some point would you have wondered could this be the One, the Promised One, the Messiah? At what point might you have considered him God incarnate or Son of God? I wonder if Peter, James, and John confronted that question at what is now called the Transfiguration described in the above scripture.

I remember a movie about the beginning of the civil rights movement in the USA during the late fifties that told the story of a white middle-class woman who hired a black woman as her housekeeper. At first, she respected the housekeeper’s work and became close to her while remaining totally blind to the discrimination that was going on in her town. Finally, there was a bus boycott that resulted in her housekeeper walking a long distance every day to come to work. The white woman drove by her housekeeper walking home one evening and stopped to see why she was walking. The white woman offered the housekeeper a ride and as she drove her to her home the white woman’s eyes began to become opened to the realities of the housekeeper’s lives.  The story builds to a scene some time later when the white woman is arrives at a confrontation between white people on one side and black people on the other that was angry and getting out of hand. She had never taken a public stand on the issue before but after watching the hatred and fear she crossed the imaginary line and separated the two groups and stood with her housekeeper.

As followers of Jesus Christ we are called to cross the line out of hate and fear and start creating a world ruled by love as children of God.

Prayer: Lord, strengthen us for our journey of loving people to life. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Wilderness

Advent

December 7, 2019

Scripture Reading: Matthew 3:1-12

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
   make his paths straight.” ’

Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. –Matthew 3:1-8

Why did John the Baptist preach in the wilderness? A wilderness is an uncultivated, useless place. Why would anyone go there in the first place? For John such a place provided solitude, a place to think. Surely, John’s reputation preceded him, if people were seeking him in such a desolate place. Perhaps the world was too much with those who sought him as it was for him. I know that feeling.

Advent is a time identified by the church set aside to step out of our regular routine and enter the darkness of the time of waiting for the coming Messiah. We often do not appreciate what we have until it is gone. Advent is an artificially created means of reminding us of what we gained when Christ came to dwell among us, share his love with us teaching and showing us how-to live-in God’s kingdom.

Last spring the man who has done my yard work since 1985 was supposed to trim my trees and bushes and otherwise prepare my backyard for summer. And then the rains came. Unusual for Oklahoma, wind and rain made it impossible for him to do the work when it needed to be done and thus, we agreed he would do it as a fall cleanup. He had to use a dump truck to carry away the branches, said he had never seen it grow so much so fast. On top of that the standing and rushing water during the rains has eroded my yard and ruined parts of the grass. It was a wilderness most likely created by global warming and the climate change that results. A lot of restorative work is now needed to return it to the yard/garden it once was.

I think this is a metaphor for our world today. The damage of greed and lust for power is awash in our land. Most of us just want to get on about our lives and put the terrors of the world out of the picture. We can no longer do that. We never should have started ignoring it, but the world is now our back yard and we must accept our responsibility in restoring it to the world God intended when he created it, whether that is related to addressing climate change or poverty or human rights of all kinds.

Prayer: Lord, during this time of advent help us to seek and to save that which we have lost through our ennui and help us work to work toward building a world ruled by your love for the world and all that is within it. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.