A Fresh Perspective

A little boy was riding home with his parents after church. His parents and new baby brother had just been involved in a parent child dedication. He was very sad on the way home and so finally his parents asked him what was wrong. He said, “The pastor said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home, but I want to stay with you guys.” What does it mean for children to be raised, nurtured, and taught in a Christian context? The prophet Micah said: The Lord has told you, what is good and what the Lord requires of you, namely, to do justice (justice here is not punitive or retributive justice, it’s not getting what you deserve justice. It’s restorative justice, it’s standing with and speaking up for the most vulnerable and less fortunate), and it fits hand-in-glove with the next characteristic the prophet names – to love kindness, or to love mercy. The third is to walk humbly with your God . That is what God expects, says the prophet – restorative justice, kindness, and humility. ...

Ten years ago we said as a congregation that our vision is one of experiencing and expressing God’s unconditional love. We could have easily come to that sense of vision by reading this letter to the Ephesians, that is actually, a letter to the church at large. In his prayer for the church the writer prays that they will understand and experience the immensity and magnitude of Christ’s love. In the passage we looked at last week the writer called upon his readers to bear with one another in love, to speak the truth in love, and to work together and build up the whole body in love. Everything is to be done in love. Now, in today’s passage we are called upon to be imitators of God by living in love. All the instructions and exhortations the writer gives to the readers in this text are expressions of what it means and what it looks like to live in love and thus, be imitators of God. First, we imitate God and live in love by putting away falsehood and deceit, so that we can honestly ...

These two commands on which hang all the law and the prophets are inseparably connected. In fact, to love one’s neighbor as one’s self is to love God, because God is in the neighbor. We are all God’s offspring. We all bear God’s image, no matter how imperfect or marred that image in us is, and we all are alive because God’s Spirit gives us life. Imagine how it grieves God when God suffers God’s children hating and devouring one another. The writer of 1 John puts it this way, “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” So we cannot sever these two commands. They go hand-in-hand. The power of love is the power of God. It is the power of the Holy Spirit. And there is no greater transforming power in the universe. I love that scene in the mov...