The Power of Mercy

  

Text: Matthew 9:9-13

Focus: Mercy

Function: To help people give up judging others.

⁹As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

¹⁰And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. ¹¹When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ¹²But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Good morning to the beloved children of God.

This morning we are going to look at Jesus’ attitude toward us and toward the people that at times we are tempted to judge.

I believe in the positive, encouraging, enabling and transforming power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We have access to that power at all times, especially since we changed our lives to follow the love and leading of the Spirit.

And that Spirit helps us to overcome the temptation to be less than loving towards others.

What I am saying is that I don’t like to focus on the negative, the sin that is sometimes prevalent in our lives because as we are living by faith and trusting that loving others, sometimes sacrificially, leads us to the place where God can use us to bring about the beloved community that Jesus preached.

And I find a lesson in this account from scripture about the calling of Matthew the tax collector.

Of the 4 gospels, only 2 were written by the apostles, Matthew and John.

All of the other books of the New Testament are written in Greek, the trade language of the Roman empire, except for Matthew, which was written in the language that Jesus actually spoke and then was translated into Greek.

Matthew was very familiar with the Jewish religion and customs.

And that makes him interesting because he was a tax collector. Tax collectors were generally hated by the Jewish population for two reasons. The first being that the Israel was occupied by the Romans who taxed them heavily so that maintain their domination over them. The people were suffering in slave like conditions. So, the Tax collectors were seen as collaborators with the occupying force. They were the reason why the people were miserable.

And then it got worse. The Tax collectors skimmed off the top of the revenue collected, so they collected even more than required and there wasn’t anything the people could do to resist.

Therefore, Tax collectors were set apart and hated by society.

And Jesus offends the crowd by sitting down at dinner with a group of them.

In the context of that hatred, Jesus comes along preaching righteousness. But the righteousness that Jesus preaches is different than the code of ethics that the religion dominating the land provided.

In the midst of their poverty and limited resources, Jesus comes along and teaches them to in faith share from their limited supply because God is the one who provides for them. They are called to rest in the love and provision of God in the midst of their struggles. We rest in God who provides for us.

I have seen that happen in Tijuana Mexico with Bittersweet ministry. It is a mission that helps displaced women with families by doing exactly what Jesus taught. The women live by gleaning recyclables off of the city dump site. So Bittersweet joined with a day care for the children while the women work the mountain of trash. The women take turns working and scavenging and share what they glean in common. It as what Jesus taught.

And this new teaching was powerful and it connected with the common people. It gave them hope.

But generosity with mercy is as important as generosity with resources.

When we live by faith we trust God to care for and lead others out of their own issues. It isn’t our place to judge others.

Jesus eats with the tax collectors who represent the epitome of the suffering that the Jewish people are experiencing. And in so doing he shows us the power of mercy.

I will jump to what is perhaps a familiar story from the NT. Jesus and Zacchaeus, another tax collector. This is when Jesus was famous and before the authorities tried to silence him. He enjoyed a huge public presence with crowds pressing in to see him. Zacchaeus a short man climbed a tree to see. And Jesus notices him and asks him feed Jesus.

Jesus asks him to serve Jesus. Jesus places himself at the mercy of Zacchaeus.

And Zacchaeus responds by changing his wicked ways and offering restoration of what he stole.

Jesus takes this sinner and asks him to serve Jesus while he is still a sinner.

Jesus asks him to be part of the movement before the man has a change of heart.

It is the request and the confidence placed in him without judgment, an act of mercy, that transforms the tax collector.

Before, I have mentioned Bittersweet ministry and Gilbert Romero’s conversion.

It is a modern day example of how mercy transforms.

Gilbert didn’t have any interest in Jesus when he met the granddaughter of a Brethren preacher in the Watts district of LA. He asked her out and she said, “Only if you come to church and meet my grandpa.”

When he did, she told grandpa that he was a musician. She didn’t mention that he was selling dope. Now Gilbert is an accomplished musician and has a very good band which we will hear at Annual Conference this year since he is on the ballot for moderator elect.

And Grandpa, hearing that he was a musician asked him to lead music in worship.

Just like Zacchaeus who didn’t know God, God reached out to him and used him with the Spirit and Gilbert was hooked on Jesus.

You see, when we give mercy, it is the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us to lead and call people into this place where they can know God and be healed by the Spirit.

Let us give up judgment for mercy.

Going With God

  

Text: Matthew 28:16-20

Focus: discipleship

Function: to remind us that God is always with us when we move forward.

⁶Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted. ¹⁸And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Good morning to you, children and disciples of the loving and living God!

Two weeks ago we looked at the ascension of Jesus and the promise given that we would be filled with the Spirit. Last week, we looked at the coming of the Spirit and what how the Spirit empowers us to serve Christ. This week follows the theme with the reason why we let the Spirit move in our lives: A command from Christ to “Go.”

Being raised in the Missionary Church. I grew up with this passage, it was one of the first passages of scripture that I was encouraged to memorize as a child.

We called it the marching orders for the church and it is officially known by theologians as “The Great Commission.”

We ar e commissioned by Christ to make disciples of Christ by teaching them Jesus’ teachings.

I don’t know if you notice, but most of the time, I like to focus on the gospel passage in the Lectionary text because of this verse and the command to teach what Jesus taught.

The focus of discipleship is Jesus’ teachings, not Patriotism or Christian Nationalism. There is a contrast to the teaching of Christ and a lot of what we hear being proclaimed as Christian values by politicians.

Jesus’ values are to love the stranger and welcome them or else risk losing our heavenly reward. Jesus values are to encourage the downtrodden and lift them up by sharing mercy and resources with them so that everyone can survive instead of merely watching out for one’s own self.

So when Jesus said: A new commandment I give you: Love one another, I find that it is important for me to remind myself and us of this truth since we live in a culture that mocks empathy as weakness.

I want to focus on Jesus here.

And, true to my upbringing, we also are given the command to be willing to go.

I wonder what it means for us to “Go.” Is he speaking of going elsewhere and leaving home and family? Paul speaks later of how impractical it is when everyone quits working to preach the gospel since the community then had no source of income, so I don’t think he means we are to leave.

So where do we go? I believe we step out of our comfort zone to love in ways with which we are not comfortable.

Jesus came to seek and save the lost and has given to us the directive to join him in this mission. Jesus referred to it as taking up our own cross, a symbol of a willingness by us to put ourselves at risk to be a part of the healing of this world that the gospel message brings.

It happens when God’s people step out in risk.

It can be a risk to get involved with the messiness of life that some people get into when they need love and care for difficult situations.

So Jesus gives to us the assurance that Jesus will never leave us in this process. This teaching from Jesus is also right before the ascension into heaven that we looked at two weeks ago. It was another promise about the coming of the Spirit and it told them what to do with the power of the Spirit that Jesus has given to us. Since the promise was given to all generations to follow, it means that the command to go and teach Jesus’ principles to the world fall on us as well.

But in 40 years of ministry, I have preached this passage several times and I never noticed a line in there until today. It is a line that I also noticed a few times during lent and Easter. The line is “some doubted.”

It is important to remember that Jesus’s physical appearance after the resurrection was different. We know that because people didn’t recognize him initially. Mary thought he was the gardener. The men on the road to Emmaus thought him to be a clueless stranger; Thomas needed to see the wounds.

I believe that Matthew includes these words “Some doubted” to remind us of the difference made when the Holy Spirit came into the crowd on the day of Pentecost.

After Pentecost, we see a different kind of boldness in the disciples. You can read the wonders of what happened in the book of the Acts of the Apostles.

Now, I preach that since salvation is a completed work for all humanity through the cross of Christ, the Spirit of Christ is present inside of every single human. Even the most evil person in history we can think of has or had access to Christ’s spirit.

Those like us, who are called Christians, are those who are trusting in the teaching of Christ and are seeking the filling and the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

And I find comfort from God through this passage. The promise the Christ is with us is reassuring. The fact that the disciples were as human as me and had their own times of doubt reminds me of my own need to keep my connection to God active through prayer and meditation so that I too can be filled with the Spirit of Christ.

It isn’t that we have to work for it to be filled with the Spirit. I don’t mean that we have to pray harder to get the Spirit. What I am saying is that we need to place ourselves in a position whereby we can ignore the clutter distractions this world offers our vanity and focus on the love that God has to give the world through us.

I do that by focusing on the command to love and reminding myself that everyone is loved by our God.

For the Common Good

  

Text: 1 Corinthians 12:4-13

Focus: Pentecost

Function: To encourage us to use our gifts

⁴Now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, ⁵and there are varieties of services but the same Lord, ⁶and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. ⁷To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. ⁸To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, ⁹to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, ¹⁰to another the working of powerful deeds, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. ¹¹All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

¹²For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Good morning to the beloved children of the loving and living God who created us to bless us.

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the birthday of the Church.

We looked last week at the ascension of Jesus and his command for them to wait in Jerusalem for the coming Spirit.

It happened on the day of Pentecost, 49 days after Easter. During the event, while they were together in unity praying, a mighty sound like rushing wind was heard and tongues of fire descended from heaven and landed on them and they began sharing the gospel in the languages of the people who were visiting Jerusalem for the Pentecost celebration.

According to Acts 2, the noise was significant and the crowd became quite large and many people decided to trust in the work of Christ to heal and restore them back to God.

And the miracle became the birthday of the Church.

This was the disciples second encounter with the Spirit. This time they were filled with God’s love and power.

Their first encounter with the Spirit was right before Jesus ascended into heaven. In the book of John, we read that Jesus breathed on them the Holy Spirit and gave them power to forgive sins. I believe that we all have the Spirit now that Jesus said “It is finished” from the cross. All of humanity was forgiven.

But this time, although they had the Spirit, this time they were “filled up.” Pentecostals call it the baptism in the spirit. In a special way God did mighty miracles through them with this filling of the Spirit.

I am not seeking for us to become a group of people who depend on miracles to prove our faith. Our faith is deeply felt, a matter of the heart and it is inspired by the moving of the Spirit when we gather in worship, or spend our own personal time in prayer and meditation. The scripture calls it a still small voice inside of us.

But God used miracles to birth the church.

We love God and are grateful for restoration. Because of that, we want more of God, to be filled with God.

Being filled with the Spirit is God’s action. Not ours. Remember, it is God who calls us to prayer and then we respond. God initiates it. Prayer isn’t always a formal time with an “Amen” at the end, but it is simply a thought or a wish, or a hope, or a blessing, or a concern that is sent upward in our thoughts for God to consider and act of God so chooses. Sometimes prayer is walking with God, almost in conversation with God.

But although we find God in that way through our still small voices calling out to God, that doesn’t mean that at times God doesn’t or didn’t do spectacular things to demonstrate their love for humanity.

So let us look at our text for today.

Paul talks of the moving of the Spirit with these specific abilities or callings or passions that are given to us by the leading of the Spirit.

I am convinced that we here at Painter Creek are being led by God to be the blessing that God wants us to be.

So what does that mean for us?

Use your gifts, when you use them, you connect with God and you bring God closer to ALL OF US.

This list of gifts that Brother Paul gives us is known as the Charis gifts. The Charismatic movement was born out of that phrase. The Charis gifts are the showy gifts, or the ones that are used by God get the attention of people in a miraculous way. For example, in chapter 14 he talks of how the gift of prophecy can exposes a persons need for God’s healing in Christ.

There are other lists of spiritual gifts, activities and services that I see more evident here at Painter Creek. I believe we have seen miraculous answers to prayer here, I wonder if someone has the gift of faith and they don’t know it. It is the kind of gift that people don’t know they have, it just shows up in times of crisis. They are people who believe in the power of prayer.

I believe that Art, music and poetry are a forms of the gift of prophecy because they are inspired by the Spirit of God and they convey a truth that is appropriate for the moment.

The Church of the Brethren has always been about the service we can give for others. We practice a different way of living. We refuse to be greedy and hoard and we share mercy as well as resources with the least of these. Paul calls service a spiritual power.

Many of us are filled with the gift of helps. We feel inspired when we do service for others. It is the Spirit moving inside of us leading us to more and more love for others and giving us a reward for obedience to Christ.

I have touched on a few of the gifts and services we see here at Painter Creek.

I can’t end there because the rest of the chapter encourages us to let the Spirit move in us by telling us how we all suffer when we don’t to use our gifts and services for God.

He gives the analogy of a body in a rather humorous way. He points out that at times we may or may not feel needed or important. But the body can’t walk unless the feet move. The body can’t see unless the eyes work, or hear unless the ears function. You get the point. You are needed. And, God has given you gifts and talents to use, so be faithful and follow Christ with your talents.

And his point is that God has supplied the needs of the Church through the members of the Church. When everyone is doing their part, for the common good, God moves in mighty ways.

You Are Witnesses

  

Text: Luke 24:44-53

Focus: ascension

Function: to remember the promises.

⁴⁴Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” ⁴⁵Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, ⁴⁶and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

⁵⁰Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. ⁵¹While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. ⁵²And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, ⁵³and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

Good morning to the beloved children of God. We live in a faith, with a God who describes their own self as Love and us as the children of the loving Father. Praise God! I want us to dwell on this truth because Romans 8 says that nothing can separate us from the Love of God.

Today we celebrate the ascension of Jesus.

Jesus dying, then coming back to life and then leaving again could have been a traumatic event, but the promises that Jesus made right before he ascended are relevant for us today and we will take some time to look at them.

The first promise is how the Holy Spirit will open our minds to understand the scripture.

After the Spirit came, we began to understand passages in the Old Testament that talked about a victorious leader who also was a suffering servant.

They could not reconcile those two different realities in their own mind. But the Spirit shows us the deep meaning behind the scriptures given to us.

They didn’t understand that God’s plan for humanity came through the agency of the suffering of the Christ.

Upon the Cross, Jesus forgave his murderers.

He showed them a different way of reacting. He showed them love and forgiveness.

The disciples understood that God’s kingdom resides in the heart of people and is not political. It is spiritual and it changes them into kinder and more loving people.

If love has not filled us and changed us, we are not listening to the leading of God’s Spirit inside of us.

The second promise he gives us the promise of the power from on high.

I don’t want to get premature with the celebration of Pentecost next week where we see how the coming of the Spirit affects the body of Christ.

Remember, I introduced the sermon with the thought that the disciples should have been concerned that Jesus was leaving them. But instead, the text says that they left the place rejoicing in what had happened.

That was a move of God to comfort them in the time of their loss.

And it came with the hope of a promise.

They were instructed to wait for the Spirit to come. Luke records it again in the book of Acts exactly the same way except he narrows down the place of ascension to the Mount of Olives with sat on the South side of the town of Bethany.

The promise given was that we will somehow have the ability to accomplish this monumental task of loving others as well as we love ourselves.

The promises of the Ascension are Understanding and the Spirit.

Then there is a call in the text.

That leads me to a transition. Many bibles include headings above groups of verses that describe the text so that people can find stuff easier. And almost every translation calls this passage; “The Ascension” because Jesus goes to heaven in the passage.

But Eugene Peterson, in his translation calls the passage “Witnesses.” And that is significant because the apostles were given the call to spread these truths to others.

We are witnesses for Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:27 says that we are the body of Christ, so we can’t be anything else. When we let the Spirit of God take control and we give in to the command to lay down our selfishness, ego and fear -three things that keep us from loving sacrificially- then Christ works through us to heal the world we are in with grace and mercy.

Without being negative, let us look at those three distractions, or obstacles, as we tell the men in prison at Kairos.

Selfishness is greedy living where we hoard what we can. We can hoard mercy and only give it to people who look and think like us. We can love only our own family, our own race, our own country, our own team and not care for the needs of others. God calls us to witness God’s love to the world entire.

Selfishness applies to money. I know people who still believe that they are measured by the money they have made. I believe we should be like Dolly Parton and be measured by the money we give away. Trust God to provide.

Then there is ego. Ego can cause an unwillingness to change course or belief when God shows us a better way by the Spirit.

One of the biggest areas that I personally contend with in dealing with my ego is forgiveness. I have to set aside my ego and lay down my pride to forgive someone who has harmed me when I know I am in the one who is right.

And finally we look at fear. Fear can control us.

Fear is not living by faith. Remember, God promises to provide. God called me to fight racism early in my life. And I used to allow myself to hate racists. Hatred of anyone is sin because even racists have access to Christ’s Spirit inside of them.

Then I realized that most prejudice comes from fear. I hate to say it but the majority of early TV programming trained me to fear black people.

And when we allow faith to flourish, fear dissipates and along with it, the prejudices that fear enhances.

For me, Christian discipline contains letting the Spirit reign in my heart because the Spirit fights those influences of fear, ego and selfishness.

Let the Spirit lead you in life. Jesus promised it right before he left us and the Spirit is here today. Praise God!

Peterson calls the passage “witnesses”

He left blessing them.

The holy Spirit makes us understand

About Suffering

  

Text: 1 Peter 3:13-18

Focus: Suffering

Function: to help us find peace in the midst of trials

¹³Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? ¹⁴But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, ¹⁵but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you, ¹⁶yet do it with gentleness and respect. Maintain a good conscience so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. ¹⁷For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. ¹⁸For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,

Good Morning. Let me remind you that you are the beloved children of the living God. Your name is carved in their hands and God will never forget you.

My title for this message is “About Suffering.” I am trying to understand a theology of suffering as we face the trials in this life.

I feel inadequate to preach the subject because I know that many of you are suffering and you have placed your faith in God and I can learn from you.

Now, I was raised in the Missionary Church and true to our name, we made it our mission to convert others to the way we understood the faith.

And unfortunately, we were told that the eternal destiny of those we didn’t reach was going to be laid on our account if we didn’t do everything possible to convert them.

I don’t believe that anymore. I believe that God will restore everyone to their love eventually because God describes God’s own self as Love.

But I don’t want to undermine the missionary call either. Most of the books that make up the New Testament were written by a missionary, Paul.

It was God’s calling on him and without that missionary call, God’s call to love everyone through Christ would have died out in the first century. We owe a lot to missionaries and God still uses them today.

Peter was not a missionary, but he writes in this passage that we are to be bold and fearless, and always be ready to share the hope that we have in Christ.

And he ends that phrase with the Kairos method: “With gentleness and respect.”

Peter is saying that while sharing the love of Jesus, we do not judge or disrespect the person with whom we are sharing.

And he tells us to do it mainly with our ethical and moral lifestyle.

It happens as we value the other person. Remember, Christ is in everyone at some level or another and we have the power of the Spirit of Christ to bring out that love in others by showing that love ourselves.

That means we have to love and forgive. Forgiveness takes faith.

It takes faith because we have oftentimes been made to suffer when we were innocent and didn’t it.

And Peter points us to Jesus who suffered and died in order to redeem us. Jesus died on the cross to forgive the sins of everyone, even those who are unjust.

Some believe that God is a God of wrath. I do not. I believe that God is a God of restoration, not revenge.

God takes our sins and unjust actions, forgives them, and gives us another chance to do the right thing.

Sometimes while doing the right thing, we suffer.

Christ suffered also. Christ suffered specifically so that we can know that he can feel our pain and he understands the terror of our suffering.

He shares it with us and lightens the burden because we know that he understands our pain.

So Peter tells the audience in the letter that we should not fear what they fear. Instead, we should rest in God, even if serving God leads us to suffer.

Peter speaks of the Other. The “They” who are those who do not yet rely on the loving power of the Spirit in their lives through Christ .

We get to show it to them.

He doesn’t tell us what they are afraid of.

I surmise that given the prevailing culture of Greek Mythology at the time this was written, the fear is the wrath of God in hell.

But we trust the fact that Jesus forgave us and we have the power of the Spirit to live a different life, one that is born from above with the power of love prevailing our intents and purposes.

We also fear pain. And when I think of suffering, I think of pain.

And in the midst of suffering I believe we can take comfort in the fact that Christ has given us the power of the Spirit to help endure.

When we suffer we can remember that Christ is with us and will never leave us.

And again, we live by faith.

The passage refers us to Jesus when we are suffering. But when I think of suffering and the pain caused by it and my need to have comfort in my suffering, I think of a Mother’s love who knows how to kiss away the pain.

Just the knowledge of her love in the midst of suffering. It is a love that doesn’t quit.

The crucifixion story came up in my devotions this week and I noticed that contingent of women who stood by Jesus when all the apostles abandoned him at the cross.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, was given a prophecy before she miraculously conceived that her heart would be broken but through the Christ, the world would have hope again.

She suffered for God when she endured her son’s murder.

I am beginning to understand the unconditional nature of God’s love for us as I understand the unconditional love of a mother for her children.

Mary suffered with Jesus.

And her suffering is part of God’s salvation for us.

Genesis 1 says that we are created in the image of God. Male and female are both the image of God.

Mary’s love for her son was divine and is part of God’s love for us.

God’s love is both Fatherly and Motherly.

One of the names for God in the Old Testament is El Shaddai. It means “The many breasted one.”

And it refers to God as the nurturer.

Motherhood is divine and although we are not all mothers, we all had one and we can rejoice in the way that God designed to show us love through our mothers.

CHRISTian

  

Text: 1 Peter 2:2-10

Focus: Being Christian

Function: to help people see the power available to them as priests to God

²Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— ³if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

⁴Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and ⁵like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶For it stands in scripture:

“See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
    a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

⁷This honor, then, is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the very head of the corner,”

⁸and

“A stone that makes them stumble
    and a rock that makes them fall.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

⁹But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

¹⁰Once you were not a people,
    but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
    but now you have received mercy.

Good morning to the beloved children of our living and loving God.

This passage contrasts the difference between trusting in the way of Christ for healing and restoration in this world or trusting in our own way of doing things.

God gave humanity a template for loving others when God became human and walked the earth as Jesus the Nazarene.

God showed love to the world. God embodied love for us so that we can learn to love and care for the other as much as we care for ourselves.

I like the way the passage calls us a people who were chosen by God and we have become a priesthood with royal power.

I place the emphasis on God’s calling us to their own self in love.

When we do the Kairos weekend, the first thing we tell the men who come is that God has called them there for a special time of receiving God’s love and mercy for them.

The call is in love and these men certainly need the mercy that love brings.

Many of them are in prison in the first place because they did not get the right kind of love and nurture in the first place.

During the weekend, we see the walls of defense that these men have built up come down as we share from our hearts the fact that we too are not perfect and somehow we have found God’s grace and forgiveness in our own failures.

We have a series of ten talks with titles like: Choices, opening the door (to God), Studying to know God, forgiveness, Christian action and others. During these talks, we get very personal and describe, as I said, a time when we failed and God brought us through. The hope is that the men in the room can see themselves as people that God can redeem as well.

For most of the men, it seems to me that keeping hope up is their biggest challenge.

So, we remind them that God has called them there and that they are not out of God’s sight for love even though they are in such a rough place.

And the point comes from the passage that God has chosen us to be God’s special people.

I like to think of that fact that God choose me to know me and to heal and restore me.

God is in the business of healing and restoration. That is why God came to planet earth as Jesus, to heal the world of its lack of love and to change the dynamic of power in human culture.

Peter, in his contrasting those who trust Christ’s way and those who do not, speaks of how the difference is seen in the way they accept “The Word.”

John 1 tells us that Jesus is the Word.

The difference is in whether or not they obey the word of God, whether or not they obey the teachings of Jesus.

I notice that he doesn’t condemn those who do not follow Jesus, but he blesses those who do. It isn’t an us verses them mentality, it is a “God is in Christ healing the world” mentality.

One of the disciplines we have as a team on Kairos is to make sure that when we see the residents, we see Christ and the potential that Christ has inside of them, instead of looking at their past failures.

Whenever I get to pray for the team right before we enter the prison, I pray that we would treat Christ well when we care for the prisoners.

Christ’s Spirit is in everyone according to Romans 1.

Somewhere, hidden in the midst of a person’s own ego, pride, failures, and successes is Christ. And anyone can draw upon Christ’s Spirit to find the healing and restoration that Jesus envisioned for the world entire. That is why he calls us a royal Priesthood. The actual Christ dwells inside of us.

Christ shines through us in the way we love others.

And picking up that theme, the text calls us a chosen generation, as I mentioned, but also a royal priesthood.

A priest is one who has direct access to God. We do through Jesus. And we are royal priests because not only do we have this direct access to God, but we are also God’s family as we are now one with God and Christ.

That means in this world, we too, are Christ, that is why we are called Christian. We are Christ to the world and we have the same power to bring people back into the love of God by loving them into God’s family.

It hit me the middle of the night last week when I was praying for the Kairos weekend during my time slot that a Christian is a person who first and foremost models Christ.

And it helps me to remember that in this world, I too am the Christ who is called to bring God’s healing.

Let us fulfill our mission.