The Jesus Way

  

Text: 1 Peter 1:17-23

Focus: Living by the Spirit

Function: to help us surrender our selfishness

¹⁷If you invoke as Father the one who judges impartially according to each person’s work, live in fear during the time of your exile. ¹⁸You know that you were ransomed from the futile conduct inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold ¹⁹but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. ²⁰He was destined before the foundation of the world but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. ²¹Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your trust and hope are in God.

²²Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual affection, love one another deeply from the heart. ²³You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

Good morning to God’s beloved family! You have been born from above to a new way of living that is full of grace and mercy. Mercy for you and for everyone we meet in the name of Jesus.

The focus of this passage leads us to part of the way that we live by the Spirit of God leading us in our lives.

Peter starts out the passage with an “If” and a response from us.

The “If” is the question of whether or not we trust the God the Father who will judge the world without partiality.

He speaks of God the Father who decides what is fair on behalf of those who were abused and mistreated here on earth.

And the command is for us to live in such a way that we take into account that God does indeed judge our actions, fairly.

Judgment is something with which we are uncomfortable. And I don’t like to preach it because I see God’s mercy in where they are full of instances where God’s mercy always triumphs the judgment of both God and humans.

That is why we are told in Romans that God will take our side if we refuse to seek our own revenge.

That is why Proverbs says that God is displeased when we are happy that an enemy of ours has a misfortune, or even gets a fair justice.

Now I am glad that Peter uses the family dynamic reference here when he refers to God as Father.

Hopefully that doesn’t evoke a negative image if you had an overbearing father.

But Peter is speaking of the God who is a loving Father. The God who wants the best for their children.

One of the biggest differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament is the way God commands justice to be done.

In the Old Testament, we see revenge against the enemies of the people of God. Except for the book of Jonah where Jonah is rebuked for being upset that God showed mercy to his enemies.

It might seem to many that the OT judgment was a system of retribution. We use it as a model for our own sense of justice when we incarcerate prisoners without helping them be rehabilitated.

Everyone deserves a second chance.

The NT system of Justice is the justice of a loving parent who wants the best for their children and when the child makes a mistake, the loving parent helps restore the child to wholeness.

God’s justice is restoration of the person who has erred. God’s system of justice is not retribution, but a way to restore that person to wholeness.

It is a father helping a child develop and mature.

It is Jesus the Savior bringing salvation, or healing, to his brothers and sisters.

When we trust Jesus, we open the door to the faith necessary for us to experience that healing that Jesus brings. We are saved in the sense that we are restored.

In the rest of the paragraph, Peter goes on to describe how we are restored spiritually to God through the precious blood of Christ.

He reminds us that it isn’t by religious practices, it isn’t something that we can buy with money, but it is a gift of God through Jesus’s death and resurrection.

And then there is a transition from the theology of how Christ’s blood saved us to how we respond.

We have been restored to God and that is healing us in our spirits, souls, emotions and even sometimes our bodies.

And he says that now that has happened, we are commanded to love others deeply.

Love, Peter will later say in this book, covers a multitude of sins.

Love wants people to be restored and made whole again. And love rejoices when they are made whole.

That is why baking cookies and sending me to the prison is so important to all of our spiritual development.

I know it is a burden on your time, but think about how you are being different than the worldly ways around you.

These guys are facing retribution for their failures.

We are showing them that they too are not enemies of God, but are children of God and worthy of God’s healing and restoration.

The word for love, Agape, is probably best translated in the King James in 1 Corinthians 13 when the translators used the word charity.

Charity is an act, not an emotion. It is practical. It is physical, It is tactile. It takes time and sacrifice. It is hands on in the midst of the mess of people’s lives. And many people are charitable without Christ, but we are driven by the Love of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, this passage does give us some help in living by the Spirit in this corrupt and selfish world.

And it is as simple as loving others and wanting the best for them. Even when they are enemies.

That takes a surrender of our ego and a laying aside of our selfishness and pride, but we do that by faith believing that we too are part of God’s healing for this world and in the end, God will bless the suffering we might endure to love others.

Let us keep on loving.

How We Believe

  

Text: 1 Peter 1:3-9

Focus: believing

Function: to help people live by faith

^3-5What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.

^6-7I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.

^8-9You never saw him, yet you love him. You still don’t see him, yet you trust him—with laughter and singing. Because you kept on believing, you’ll get what you’re looking forward to: total salvation.

Good morning to the beloved Children of the living God!

This Sunday after Easter, we look at the appearance of Jesus when when he revealed himself to Thomas.

From last week, we learned that the 11, actually 10 of the 12 disciples were in the room when Jesus appeared. Apparently Thomas was somewhere else.

And Thomas didn’t believe the report of Mary, the 2 disciples who were with Jesus on the road to Emmaus and the 10 who saw him in the room where they were hiding.

Thomas declares that in order to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, he must see for himself and if it is true, then he wanted to inspect the wounds to see if they were real. Hence, we call him Doubting Thomas.

Jesus is patient with him and appears again to the disciples, the 11 this time, with Thomas in the room. And before Thomas has a chance to ask, Jesus informs him that he knew his doubts already and offers to let him inspect the wounds.

Thomas believes and again confesses Jesus to be his lord and God.

And Jesus answers with the joy that Thomas believes now, but then says that others will be blessed by believing without seeing.

I believe he is talking about us. We take the resurrection as true based on the testimony of these witnesses we have here in scripture.

And Jesus calls us blessed for that.

And that leads us to today’s text. Peter is speaking about how he was privileged to be one of the actual eye witnesses to Jesus’s resurrection.

Peter, the author of this letter, celebrates what it means that God has raised Jesus from the dead and given to us a new life.

He focuses on the new life we have in Christ. It is led by the Spirit of God and it lives in the peace of Christ as it rests in God’s love for us and for others.

We rest in God’s love.

And Peter describes this blessing of rest in two ways. We have God’s promise of healing and restoration here in earth and the promise of heaven in the future.

And all of that is because God provided a way for us through the cross of Christ and the power of the resurrection.

Peter has great hope in the truth of salvation since he is a witness to the fact of the resurrection.

Thomas wanted evidence to believe. Peter had evidence and was convinced. His conviction was a powerful witness.

But we have a different approach to believing. We don’t see Jesus raised.

In Acts 1, we read that Jesus ascended into heaven after the resurrection.

When he ascended, he commanded the disciples to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit to give them the power to live the Christian life.

50 days later,at the feast of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came in a visible way and filled the now 120 believers who were waiting for the promise.

It was the birthday of the Church and it came by the power of God’s Spirit .

The way we have to believe is by the witness of the Holy Spirit toward us. God calls each and every one of us. Being in the Church, having a Christian environment around us helps us become aware of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives.

We believe by the power of the Spirit of God.

In Kairos, we depend on the Holy Spirit to do the work of transformation in the lives of the residents to whom we minister.

We have this phrase that we drill into the team: “Listen, Listen, Love, Love.”

Imagine that with me. When we are listening to prisoners, sometimes we hear some pretty bizarre things and ideas. Many of these guys are searching for answers and not necessarily in the Christian tradition, we have Muslims, Wiccans and a lot of white guys who worship the Nordic Gods as part of their affiliation with Neo-Nazi gangs.

We hear some bizarre things from them and our job is to point them to the God of Love, who manifested that love through the presence of Jesus on the earth.

We Listen to them with a poker face so that we don’t look shocked when they say something off the wall. And we don’t argue with their beliefs, we just simply keep pointing back to Christ Jesus and his love for them.

It takes a lot of listening, so we emphasize listen, listen first. And we listen without judgment, without thinking of a response, but we are trained to listen to them and reflect back what they say so that they know that they are heard and valued just as they are.

By listening to them, in whatever they say, we prove to them God loves them.

A new guy on the team, as we were going through this training yesterday asked us when we get to tell them the right thing to do to set them straight and correct them.

And we reminded him the second part of that phrase listen, listen, is Love, Love. By listening, they know they are valued by God who cares enough for them to get to know them.

So, our answer to the new guy on the team is the answer to the question posited by the Title of the Sermon: How we believe. My answer was trust the Holy Spirit to lead them into this new life.

We don’t need to press our hands into Jesus’s side, hands and feet, we believe by the power of the Holy Spirit leading us to faith.

So we have this text which I believe is a sort of prophecy of blessing to us about what it means for us to believe by the power of the Spirit.

Let us let the Spirit lead us into belief. Keep on listening for the leading of God in your lives.

Promises

  

Text: Luke 24:36-49

Focus: Easter

Function: to celebrate our redemption

³⁶While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” ³⁷They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. ³⁸He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” ⁴⁰And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. ⁴¹Yet for all their joy they were still disbelieving and wondering, and he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” ⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³and he took it and ate in their presence.

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.”

Happy Easter to the beloved children of God.

Today we are going to look at the wonder and amazement that the early believers felt when they realized that death could not hold Jesus captive.

The context of our text takes place with two of the disciples who were not among the twelve, but apparently close followers of Jesus who witnessed Jesus’ death and were grieving at their loss so they choose the 30 mile trek home to Emmaus, their home, because they thought this whole thing with Jesus was over after they killed him.

While they were walking, Jesus himself appears to them and enjoins a conversation with them and he asks them why they are grieving.

They are amazed that someone leaving Jerusalem didn’t know what happened so they told him that they killed this great man who was most certainly a prophet or better.

And Jesus patiently listens to them while they grieve during their 8-12 hour trek home. Jesus starts talking to them about all the prophecies in the Old Testament about him and starts explaining to them a different way of understanding how these prophecies were going to turn out. He explains how he fulfilled them without starting a war.

They enjoy the conversation in a deeply spiritual and compelling way. Later on, when they remember it, they describe that there was something inside of their hearts that was persuading them to listen and not argue.

They said that their hearts were burning inside of them as they listened. Jesus set their hearts on fire and gave them a spiritual understanding that they didn’t have before.

Up until this point, all they knew of Jesus was that he was a fellow traveler. They make the 30 mile trek with him and arrived at their home. In typical mid-eastern spirituality, they welcomed this stranger and served him a meal.

And when Jesus broke the bread, they finally realized that it was indeed Jesus who had been talking with them. Suddenly Jesus vanishes.

They knew it was a miraculous sighting so instead of resting, they left their home, by now it is evening, and make the 30 mile trek back to Jerusalem to tell the twelve.

After they get into the room and tell the twelve, Mary, the first witness to the resurrection confirms their story and reiterates her story of seeing Jesus early in the morning at the tomb.

Everyone in the room was wondering just exactly what was happening and suddenly Jesus himself appears to them in the room and declares that he is risen from the dead. That is where out story begins today.

Now, it appears from the biblical account that Jesus’s body had a different appearance after he rose from the dead. His hands and his feet and his side still bore the wound marks from his murder, but the rest of him looked different enough that they didn’t immediately recognize that it was him.

That doesn’t take away from the miracle or the fact of his resurrection. The scars proved who he was but I find hope in the fact that he had a different appearance that has divine attributes> We too will have glorified bodies.

I suspect that the main reason they didn’t recognize him was not that he was that different looking but that they simply weren’t looking for him.

To them, death is final. Although the scripture reports that they witnessed Jesus raising a few other people from the dead, the one who did the work was gone and they seemed to be left without hope.

Except for God and God’s promises.

Jesus had tried to tell them what was happening but resurrection just wasn’t in the wheelhouse of their understanding. It isn’t natural.

And maybe the revelation of Jesus to Mary is a clue. She, when she saw Jesus thought he was the gardener and thought he might know what happened that the stone was rolled away and the tomb was empty.

And in that story it isn’t until Jesus addresses her by name and she realizes that a stranger cannot know who she is so it must be the Lord.

And although Jesus was talking with them and trying to convince them that he was the same person. He even invited them to touch his still visible wounds and eat in front of them so that they would know he was real and not a ghost, they didn’t understand.

Until. They didn’t understand until the Spirit of God opened their minds to believe.

The text says the Holy Spirit opened their understanding and they believed. The Spirit leads us to Jesus and fulfills the promises of God to us.

I imagine the joy that they must have felt when the realization dawned on them.

I wonder if Mary was relieved that others finally believed her story as well. God choose a woman to be the first witness to the resurrection. Perhaps because she was deeply spiritual and seeking after God. In her seeking, God filled her with answers.

This Easter, and always, let us rest in the hope and the promise of the resurrection.

Spiritual Mindset II

  

Text: Philippians 2:5-11

Focus: spirit life

Function: the reward of surrender

⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

⁶who, though he existed in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be grasped,
⁷but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
⁸    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

⁹Therefore God exalted him even more highly
    and gave him the name
    that is above every other name,
¹⁰so that at the name given to Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

Good morning to the beloved children of the living God.

Today, we are celebrating Palm Sunday and taking a look at what it means for us that Jesus Christ gave his life for our redemption.

On Palm Sunday, the crowd of people welcomed Jesus because they thought that he was going to set them free from the power of Rome and restore Israel to the great nation it was when David was King.

They were looking for a military solution to the problem of the injustice that was taking place among them because of the Roman occupation.

And that phrase that they cried out on Palm Sunday: “Hosannah, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” literally means “Oh Lord, come and save.”

Or more simply put: “Save us.” It is the heartfelt cry to God for help in the midst of trials. Crying out to God for help in any situation is similar to what they were doing and the neat thing is that the book of Romans tells us that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

To be saved means to be healed by our restoration to God. It is the act of God to heal us by the power of the Spirit that is given to us when we decide to follow Jesus. The more we trust Jesus, it appears, the more the Spirit has power in our lives to help us live like Jesus calls us to live.

So, by God’s grace we are saved and healed.

We have 35 hours of training before the Kairos team goes into the prison. They last most of the day on Saturday. Yesterday at our team meeting we were thinking about Holy Week and someone commented on the fickleness of the crowd that one week could cry out blessed is Jesus and 5 days later call for his murder.

They were looking for a political solution and God was looking for a spiritual solution.

We are called first as spiritual beings and should develop the same spiritual mindset that Jesus had.

So, our text calls us to have the same mind inside of us that was in Christ Jesus.

He speaks of the fact that in heaven, Jesus sat at the throne of the power of God where he commanded the universe and all that is in it and he gave that up to become a mere human. It is funny that the devil tempted him with something that he had already possessed and gave up.

He gave up power and privilege in order to redeem humanity and the scripture calls us to do the same.

The world we live in tells us that it is okay to hoard and not care about the effects of our hoarding on other people. Wealth is considered a sign of blessing, even from God.

But Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who hoards their wealth to gain reward in heaven.

Let the spiritual mindset of sacrifice for the good of others as well as ourselves be in us.

Paul says that because of his willingness to give up his power and privilege God gave him more back in return.

And we assume the promise is the same for us. We too will be rewarded in heaven and with the presence of God here on earth.

This whole text is a poem, most likely it is a song that the early church sang.

And it gives them hope in the midst of suffering because God exalted Jesus when Jesus was willing to suffer loss for the sake of others.

And it is Easter season and lent and we are going to revel in the sacrifice of Christ.

I just got done promising you that God will be with you and bless you, even eternally, when we are willing to suffer for Christ.

But it is important to understand that only Jesus is the Christ.

The Spirit of Christ lives in all of us and we are one with Christ.

But this text speaks to the uniqueness of what Jesus did for us.

Jesus opened the door for salvation for all of humanity.

The text says that in the end, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is lord.

I have been reading NT scholars who say that the Greek language that it was written in implies that they will all willingly confess.

Revelation 20 speaks of a final gathering when the dead are judged for their works and the book of life is opened and salvation is given.

It is a symbolic book and I could have the symbolism wrong, but it speaks of a transition time between a new heaven and a new earth and all of humanity is standing before God on a giant crystal sea and God’s throne is there with the Emerald Rainbow and the flashes of lightning and the thousands of angels and it seems to be a scene of tremendous majesty.

And then Jesus is revealed. And I believe that the lies of the deceiver will be unveiled and people will clearly see the love of God for us through Jesus and rush to embrace Jesus. The Church, by the way, is those who have already done it.

The cool thing is it speaks of the fact that in the end, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, everyone will be brought back to God.

Praise God.

And God calls us to have that same loving and sacrificial mindset for others as well.

Spiritual Mindset

  

Text: Romans 8:6-11

Focus: Spirit life

Function: to contrast following God vs ourselves

⁶To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed, it cannot, ⁸and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

⁹But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. ¹⁰But if Christ is in you, then the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

Good morning to the beloved children of God!

Our text today is from the great chapter on the power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those who trust in Christ.

It is a fitting scripture for Lent because it causes us to reflect on our own failures, mistakes or, as the text calls it: Sin.

We have the power of the Spirit to resist the power of error in our lives.

He starts out the chapter telling us that the Holy Spirit is the answer to the problem we have with failing to meet the standard that we believe God requires from us.

He contrasts what he calls the mind set on the flesh and the mind set on the spirit.

By “The flesh” he means our carnal nature. Setting our minds solely on our own needs instead of the needs of the community is part of what he is speaking about.

But he is talking about it in a selfish way, when we hoard our wealth and others suffer.

It is ironic that we honor billionaires who hoard more wealth than can be possibly spent in a lifetime while others are working for them and living on food stamps in a cycle of poverty. God has a lot to say about that kind of hoarding. God says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. And here is the sad part about it, how we are duped into worldly standards: In our minds, we may covet their wealth thinking of the fun that luxury will bring.

That is the mind set on the flesh. And we are to resist that thinking.

And we know that money doesn’t make us happy.

So, he commands us to keep our minds set on the subtle leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

That starts us on our understanding of the passage. Now look at vs 8 says that says that we are alive because of righteousness.

He is speaking of the fact that Jesus forgave all of humanity on the cross when he said it is finished.

God does not hold us accountable for our sins.

Christians believe this and trust in God’s forgiveness for them.

It is important to understand that God is love and that God loves us unconditionally.

When I introduced the sermon, I mentioned a standard that God requires. But we don’t have to meet any standard for God to love us. The promise of God for us is salvation, which means that we are restored to God and healed from the error of evil that is present in the world. Even healed from the times when we have knowingly or unknowingly been a part of that evil.

God forgives and cleanses us from all mistakes that we have made in the past, we will make in the future and the ones that we are making now of which we might not even be aware.

How often have I preached a sermon wishing sister or brother so and so would hear it and change when the person who needed to hear it was me?

Our human nature never really takes the time to consider it may be me God is talking to.

Lent is that season of reflection and it is part of my duty here as pastor to lead us in confession.

I am a minister of the gospel you know that this pulpit is not for political purposes. But from a biblical perspective, I just wonder how much accountability we as a people will have for the 170 girls murdered in a school in Iran. Or, when we read Leviticus 19:33-34 that says God will judge the nation that does not care for the alien or the stranger. So how will God judge us for the actions of ICE? Or, when our bombs were used to slaughter 20,000 children in Gaza? These evils of war and national identity are condemned in scripture.

We believe that all war is sin since it doesn’t meet the standard of love that Christ commands.

I believe in a strong defense, and we need our military. But the murder of innocents is a war crime and I believe that we as a people will be held accountable by God for those actions.

So, as pastor of this church, before God we confess our sin and ask God for forgiveness. “God, give us your mercy and make us merciful in response.”

I hope you realize that I am not trying to be political here., Remember what I was talking about before that confession. I was speaking of how we are forgiven for sins we have committed, ones we will commit and for the ones of which we are not aware.

We are forgiven, even though we are guilty because God is love and God forgives us, especially when we come to God and ask God.

So, again, not politics but the power of forgiveness is what I am trying to preach here. Humanity desperately needs forgiveness. This evil we see committed recently isn’t anything new in the history of humanity. That doesn’t make it right or mean that we are consenting of the evil that is happening. It is humanity itself with its greed that leads us to war needs redemption.

Praise God for Jesus. Jesus redeems us.

So Paul; using that phrase, “the body is alive because of righteousness” has to do with the fact that God through Christ Jesus loves us no matter what we have done.

God is love and love is God’s nature.

And the text says that those who follow the Spirit belong to Christ.

The whole thing boils down to this prayerful leading from God that we get when we surrender our lives to the way that Jesus wants us to live.

By faith we trust the leading of the Spirit to cause us to live in the power of God’s love and the promise is that God’s power will sustain us in everything we face.

In The Light

  

Text: Ephesians 5:6-14

Focus: Being good

Function: to help people see doing good has its rewards

⁵You can be sure that using people or religion or things just for what you can get out of them—the usual variations on idolatry—will get you nowhere, and certainly nowhere near the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God.

^6-7Don’t let yourselves get taken in by religious smooth talk. God gets furious with people who are full of religious sales talk but want nothing to do with him. Don’t even hang around people like that.

^8-10You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You’re out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. So no more stumbling around. Get on with it! The good, the right, the true—these are the actions appropriate for daylight hours. Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.

^11-16Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are. It’s a scandal when people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in the light of Christ.

Wake up from your sleep,
Climb out of your coffins;
Christ will show you the light!

So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!

Good morning to the beloved Children of God.

I bring you greetings and thanks from the residents at Warren Correctional Institute where I spent the day yesterday in a retreat as we explored the meaning of some of the beatitudes.

I want to pass along thanks from the residents for all the cookies that are lovingly baked for these guys. I gotta tell you, I don’t know how they survive in prison. I hear horror stories of the food and the conditions that they have to put up with.

The blessing of Kairos is that we treat them like men. Yesterday they served lunch and it was beef stew. Somehow some of the beef got burnt and gave an acrid odor to the room where it was prepared. But the team toughed it out and separated the burnt from the caramelized and fed the residents. One guy at my table eating the tinged beef almost broke into tears of gratitude because it was the first time he had beef this year.

When we go in there and show them unconditional love, it is powerful. They respond with faith and belief that they are worth something.

And that is an introduction to my message this morning as we look at the effect and the power of the light of the gospel as it transforms darkness.

The passage contrasts light and darkness. It contrasts good and evil. It contrasts worldly living with living by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The book of Ephesians is one of several letters written to different churches to encourage and or correct the church as it was struggling with its foundation.

In the letter, Paul has just got done telling them what worldly living is. And it is centered on greed and selfishness and it leads to impurity and immorality. Those are referred to as the deeds of darkness. They generally have to do with one person taking advantage over another. We are called to treat others just as well as we treat ourselves.

And sadly, he points out that some of this worldly living comes from people in the church telling others that it is okay to keep on living for themselves instead of being a part of the community into which Christ called us.

I believe we see it happening still with the obscene wealth collected by some of these TV evangelists.

Paul is trying to warn us off a doctrine the leads to greed and selfishness. Our doctrine should always leads us to the same mercy and compassion for others that we expect for ourselves and our loved ones.

When he tells them that they groped their way once through that kind of life he is reminding them of the time that they were ignorant of the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

I want to emphasize that we are called to love others as well as we love ourselves and that sometimes that is difficult. We have to forgive when we have been hurt. We have to endure the foibles that another person has might rub us wrong.

And I want to emphasize that we cannot do that in our own strength. We read the Old Testament and we see the failures that the people of God had because the Spirit of God was not generally given to humanity until the sacrifice of the Christ.

Somehow only a few people were filled with the Spirit in the OT accounts. But now, the Spirit is given to the world entire and all we have to do is tap into its power and love.

In our text, we see the contrast between light and dark. Paul implies the the difference should be obvious to us. Do good and don’t do bad things.

When we do good, we are fulfilling the law of Christ.

That might seem obvious to all of us.

But the world we live in tells us that it is okay to live just for ourselves. As a matter of fact, we are taught the world is a jungle and we have to fight our way through it to survive the dangers that lurk everywhere.

We are taught to fight to survive instead of cooperate to survive. But Jesus calls us to better.

The Church changed the economic picture in Jerusalem when they started their commune. The took seriously the words of Jesus and held their lives in common.

Sadly, or apparently, that didn’t work out because it didn’t continue and subsequent attempts at communes fail after a generation or so.

I’m not advocating a commune, but I illustrate it to point out just how radical their willingness to obey Jesus was. They were taking the command to love others as well as themselves to its logical conclusion.

They focused on love for others. In my biblical opinion, there just isn’t anything more important for us to be doing as believers. That is how we shine the light of Christ.

So Paul takes a very hard stand against Christians living in greed in this passage and tells us that instead we are called to be bearers of the light.

We are called to do good for others. Earlier in the letter, Paul reminds them that they are saved by God to do good works. And now he is telling them that those preachers who preach personal prosperity are wrong and we shouldn’t listen to them but rather expose them.

We do good and we love because love covers over a multitude of sinful behavior. Love shines the light.

It is love that transforms the heart and that is where our power lies.