Pastor John Bell, the senior pastor at Wellshire Presbyterian church, preached a great sermon last Sunday. Below is the "rough text" of his sermon. Enjoy!
This is a VERY crude manuscript from last Sunday, May 2, based on Acts 11:1-18.
“By Our Love” by John H. Bell, Jr.
Within most religions, there is a desire to be: perfect – to get it right, to be perfectly clean, to follow the rules, to obey every single law, to become perfectly sinless, holy. The Hebrew canon insists that we are to be holy, as God is holy. Jesus says that you should be perfect, just as your Heavenly Father is perfect. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” he says. And yet that very desire to be perfect, to be sinless, can also lead you in the wrong direction. If you are not careful, the desire to be holy, perfect, sinless, can ironically separate you from God and others, which is universally acknowledged to be the essence of the laws of God. Left unchecked, striving for personal perfection can lead you to build up walls around you – walls of hostility that lead you to despise or even hate those people who do not follow your rules, who are not as good as you are – and believe me: the feeling is mutual!
Thus, we find ourselves – quite wrongly! – fearing or even hating those who are not like us. There is something within human nature that causes us to fear or hate what we do not know, what is different from us — the alien, the stranger, the one who does not look like us or act like us or share our values. Who frightens you? Who do you hate? Who do you think might ruin your life, corrupt your world or threaten your values? Who do you wish was dead? Would his death improve your life?
The first Christians were mostly Jews, and they were afraid of Gentiles – pagans, secular, worldly people, who did not obey Jewish laws, who ate unclean food, were not circumcised, did not worship God in the synagogue and did wicked things – like watch Desperate Housewives on the Sabbath. They were not terrified of them, so much, as they were afraid that they would be corrupted by their influence. They were not allowed by rule of law to eat with them, speak to them or been seen in public with them. Gentiles were simply “different,” which meant somehow they were bad, a threat to their little chosen community of faithful Christians. The disciples were kosher; they were clean, holy, pure, chosen by God; the Gentiles were considered to be an unclean, dirty, vile, disgusting people.
But that all changed when Peter had a dream. He was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance he saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to him. As he looked at it closely he saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. He also heard a voice saying to him, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” But he replied, “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” But a second time the voice answered from heaven, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. … At that very moment three men arrived at Peter’s house. These men had been sent to Peter from Caesarea by a man named Cornelius, who was a centurion and a member of the elite Italian cohort. He was a devout, God-fearing man, who prayed and gave alms to the poor, but … a still a Gentile. The Spirit told Peter to go with them and not to make a distinction between the unclean Gentiles and the kosher Christians. Six Christians accompanied him, and they entered Cornelius’ house. He told them how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, “Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.”
And, as Peter began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon the Jews at the beginning … So … Peter baptized Cornelius in the name of Jesus Christ, and the early church had to come to realize that they could not make any distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, for we are all somehow one in Christ Jesus, our risen Lord, whose plan it is to gather up all things together – things in heaven and things on earth! The dividing wall of hostility, of hate, of fear, between Jews and Gentiles has come down in Jesus Christ. “Truly,” as Peter claims, “God shows no partiality.” None.
[Notice that it was Peter and the church that had to change to accommodate Cornelius.]
This is true because the way of Jesus Christ is – not a religion of a thousand rules, but it is the way of love – radical love, extravagant love. The essence of Jesus’ expectation of you is love: he says that all you have to do is love God with your whole heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment, a simple commandment, a very clear commandment: he says that we should love one another. We should love one another as he has loved us … and there is no greater love than one who voluntarily lays down his life for another … in the same way, you must deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow him … in the way of love. You are not only expected to love your family members and your friends or your fellow church members and your book club, but this is a love for people who are very different from you, a love for the neighbors whose dog barks all night, a love of neighbors all the way around the world living in huts in Zimbabwe, a love of those who sleep on the streets or rot in our jails, a love for your enemies. The love of God does not recognize borders or skin color or socio-economic class … truly, God shows no partiality. “Red or yellow, black or white, they are precious in his sight; Jesus loves all the children of the world.” Yes, Christians are supposed to be perfect: we are supposed to be perfect in our love; we are to love purely, perfectly – in this way we are holy, in this way we are like our Heavenly Father, God, who is LOVE. People are supposed to know us, to recognize us as Christians – not by our piety or moral rectitude, but, as they old hymn declares: “They will (or should!) know that we are Christians by our love, by our love.”
Religion that is based on a thousand rule builds walls and fosters hate. You are in or out, you are with us or you are against us, you are clean or dirty, you obey or you dis-obey, you are good or bad, you are holy or not, you are on your way to heaven or destined to hell. Religion that is focused on following rules inflates the importance of the self, because everything seems to rise or fall based on your discipline and ability to obey. Religion which is based upon rules is cold and heartless, resulting in deadly legalism. If you are primarily focused on your ability to obey, you are not focused on God or others – you only care about how YOU are doing. It is this kind of religion which gives religion a bad name, breeds terrorists and hate-mongers and wages war in the name of God.
But true Christianity is not based on rules; it is infused with love; it offers an abundance of grace and mercy and forgiveness; and it creates peace – peace for those who are near and peace for those who are far off. In the name of Jesus Christ, there is no room to hate aliens or strangers – even if they are here against the rules; in the church of Jesus Christ, there is no justification to hate homosexuals just because they are different from you; in the name of the God of love, you cannot despise or disrespect or dismiss the Muslim or the Jew, the scientist of the artist, the conservative or the liberal, the President or the Pope or the common man of the people.
Just as Peter realized in a dream and subsequent encounter with the Gentiles, truly, God shows no partiality — and, in God’s name, we may not harbor hate or withhold love. Who are you to hinder to flow of God’s love for all people everywhere? You, who have been called, saved and granted new life in Jesus Christ, have been commanded to love – even the stranger and alien in your midst and your enemy in the far country. Indeed, you were not called by Jesus Christ to follow a strict set of rules and regulations, nor to force others follow the rules; you were called by God to perfectly love others. You were not called to build up dividing walls of hostility; you were called to be ambassadors of reconciliation.
No comments:
Post a Comment