A Fresh Perspective

To love God is to love who and what God loves. The deeper we grow in God’s love the more connected we become to everyone and everything else. And this love comes to fruition and expression in how we treat others and care for others. John makes it very clear in this passage that loving God and loving God’s world, loving our sisters and brothers in the human family are inseparably tied together. Because God dwells in every human being and every human being is sustained by the Spirit of God, every human being has a bit of God in them. Every human being bears God’s image, no matter how marred that image may be. When we love others, we are loving God. God is Love, says the writer of this passage. Most of our beliefs about God are like fingers pointing at the moon. The moon is so much bigger than what we see with our eyes from this vantage point, from this earth looking up. It’s even more so with God. When Jesus talked about God he used images and symbols and told stories. How can any ...

Our Gospel reading is part of the parable of the good shepherd where the actions of the good shepherd are contrasted with those of the hired hand. The contrast is based on how each one responds to dangers that threaten the lives of the sheep. The good shepherd is willing to lay down his life in protecting and caring for the well-being of the sheep. The hired hand is ready to flee to save his own life if the threat becomes too real. The hired hand is not fully committed to the good of the sheep. The hired hand, unlike the good shepherd feels no sense of belonging or connection to the sheep. So he is out to preserve his own life rather than the lives of the sheep. Now, one question that we have to ponder that makes a big difference in how we read and apply this parable relates to the identity of the sheep. Who are the sheep? I said last week that persons can read the same scriptures, but then interpret them and apply in completely different ways. Many Christians read this in an exc...

I heard about a lady who decided to get a pet after her husband died. The house seemed so empty and she wanted some company. So she went to the pet store and the pet store owner talked her in to getting a parott. She brought it home and after a few days this parrot started talking--but this foul had a terribly foul mouth. She could not believe the words that came out of the bird’s mouth--blankety blank blank after blank. She tried everything she could think of it to cure it. She would squirt it with a water bottle. She would take its food away for a little while. She tried throwing a blanket over the cage. And the pet store would not take it back.   One afternoon the pastor called and wanted to stop in for a few minutes to visit and have prayer with her. In her haste to straighten the house, she forgot about the parakeet. Just as the pastor was leaving the parakeet billowed out the most horrendous string of curse words you ever heard. She was so upset that as soon as the past...

For a good number of years my dominant image of God was that of a Judge who presided in a heavenly courtroom and demanded payment from his human creation for breaking his law. The God I imagined was bound to the law and intolerant toward sin. God demanded punishment – by death. So God sent Jesus, God’s unique Son, to die, so that God’s justice would be satisfied, and God would be free to release the rest of humankind from the penalty and punishment they deserve for having transgressed God’s law and offended God’s justice. But then, at some point on my journey when I gave myself permission to question and even doubt, I began to wonder why God’s unique Son would have to die such a cruel death by execution in order to satisfy some broken law, particularly since God is the one who makes the law in the first place. God can change a law anytime God wants to, I reasoned. So why would God require this sort of tit-for-tat, quid-pro-quo justice that would demand the sacrifice of a human li...

If you are familiar with this story about Thomas, you might remember this as the story of doubting Thomas. In fact, the expression “doubting Thomas” has become something of a cliché. But it’s not really accurate. It is true that most of our English versions use the word “doubt.” Our text reads that Jesus says to Thomas: “Stop doubting and believe.” But what he actually says is, “Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” I would paraphrase it this way: Stop hesitating, stop wavering, stop straddling the fence, be committed. In order to understand the ins and outs of doubt, the positive and negative aspects of doubt, we have to understand what faith is. There are three components to authentic faith and when you understand these three components, then you will understand why I paraphrase Jesus as saying, “Stop hesitating. Be committed.” What we normally think of when we use the term belief is just one component of what faith is. This involves believing intellectually, giving mental assen...

The resurrection of Jesus is a matter of faith. Perhaps you have heard Christian pastors or leaders argue that the resurrection of Jesus is the most clearly attested   event of history. That, of course, is not true. The Easter stories in our Gospels are stories of faith, not historical reports. There is no way to verify historically the resurrection of Jesus. What we can say historically is that some of Jesus’ closest followers, who participated in his mission, became convinced that God raised him from the dead. All four of the Gospels give us an empty tomb story. There are certainly differences in the details, but they all build a story around the empty tomb. And three of the four Gospels, with the exception of Mark, give us appearance stories. Our Gospel story today combines the empty tomb story with an appearance story. Now, one   might think that appearance stories are stories only relevant to Jesus’ first disciples who actually knew him personally. That’s not true. ...