Growing Up

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

1 Corinthians 13:8b-13

May 31, 2015 (Confirmation) • Portage First UMC

We’re at “that stage,” where my 15-year-old daughter reminds me constantly that she is not a child anymore. She’s taking driver’s ed online right now, and warns us—excuse me, reminds us—that she will be driving soon. And it’s hard for parents to see their children grow up. We may joke around about how we can’t wait for them to get out of the house, but in our deepest core as parents, it’s an adjustment, and a hard one at that. Yet we also know it’s a necessary and unavoidable process, and it’s important that, as parents, we guide our children to “grow up well.” We want them to become responsible citizens, well-adjusted people and content individuals.

Now, there’s never really a time when our job as parents is done. Growing up doesn’t sever those relationships between parent and child, but it does change them. And there are some agreed-upon signs that indicate when you have grown up. I want to share just a few this morning. For one, when you’re grown up, you begin thinking about and planning for the future. Part of this sign is seen when you invest in a retirement fund; it’s been said that you are grown up when you own stock through such a fund. Now, you may be like me and have no idea what stock you own, but I own stock. I’m planning for the future. Another sign of being grown up is beginning to care about weight and health. You may not do anything about it, but you care about it. You’re aware of the health issues and your weight. And that may go along with the next characteristic: you reminisce about the “good old days.” You know, the days when you could eat anything you wanted and not gain weight. The days when those pants you have in the back of the closet used to fit. Or just the days when life was simpler. You use the words “remember when” a lot.

A fourth characteristic of growing up is beginning to appreciate the finer things in life. You take time to decorate your home rather than just throwing up a bunch of posters on the wall. Or, in our case, our most recent sign of growing up was buying a home, a place of our own. Or another sign of this “finer things” appreciation is when you find yourself saying something like, “This music these teenagers are listening to today is awful. It’s not nearly as awesome as the music I listened to when I was that age.” Yeah, the music your parents complained about! Number five is one my wife will never achieve: you become content with less sleep. Remember when, as a kid or teenager, you could sleep 10, 11, 12 hours a night? No more ten hour nights. You’re up and around and getting things done. And finally, a grown up is someone who doesn’t mind staying home. In fact, they may prefer it. I know when Cathy and I were first married, we looked for things to do on the weekends or in the evenings, just to get out. We did things with friends and we tended to accept most invitations from those friends to go out. Now, we both find ourselves craving nights at home. At the beginning of the week, I look over the schedule and the nights that get me the most excited are the ones where I don’t have to be anywhere. Home is a refuge rather than a prison.

And so we take a lot of time and energy focusing on growing up, on feeling like we’re adults. Do we spend the same amount of time focusing on our spiritual maturity? You know, in the church, we have rituals that signify important moments and events. Baptism is a moment of beginning, of initiation. For many of us, that happened when we were infants or children, and our parents promised to raise us in the faith until that time when we could take those vows for ourselves. We call that moment “confirmation,” and it’s the time when, for all intents and purposes, people are considered “adults” in the church, able to take on adult responsibility. It roughly corresponds to the Jewish rite of bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah, when a young man or woman is officially accepted as a member of the community. Confirmation is the time when we choose for ourselves who we will serve. The three young men that, today, will be confirmed are making that choice for themselves. They have studied and put energy into their spiritual growth, and today is an important moment. So we turn to the Scriptures to see what they have to say to us about being spiritually mature, or growing up in Christ.

We’ve been hovering this month over this one chapter from Paul’s writing to the Corinthians, though we’ve covered a lot of the book because it all leads to this chapter in many ways. Paul, earlier in the letter, has chastised the Corinthians for being spiritual immature. He tells them he wanted to deal with them as people who are spiritual, but in fact they are still “worldly.” He writes, “I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.” And if that isn’t enough, he calls them “mere infants in Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:1-2). Much of this letter, including the thirteenth chapter, is written to help them “grow up,” to help them become all they should be in Christ. Paul is acting as a spiritual parent to the church, and he continues to fill that role to the Church today. So, according to this chapter, what does it mean to grow up in Christ?

Paul reminds the Corinthians that there are many things that are part of their experience now that will not last forever. Like some of the things that are so important in childhood or in adolescence—those things are temporary. We have friends who had a child who, for what seemed like the longest time, didn’t speak, or when he spoke, he didn’t say much. And, like good parents, they worried a lot about that. They took him to speech therapy and he still progressed slowly, but I kept reminding them that, when he was an adult, no one would care or remember those things. And true enough, now that he’s a fine young man, he’s more than made up for his earlier silence and very few remember that he once struggled with speech. The toys that are so important to children—those things are temporary. We’ve been learning that the last few weeks. Things that were once so important to our kids and now being thrown away or taken to the rummage sale table. Paul says that childhood thinking, childhood reasoning, childhood speech patterns, even the way your voice sounds in childhood—all of those things are temporary. They are passing away; they will not last. Those are the things of the here and now, not of eternity. And, maybe most surprising of all, Paul compares those things, the things of childhood, to spiritual gifts. He’s had this long discussion about spiritual gifts in chapter 12 and will again in chapter 14. We spent a whole sermon at the beginning of this series talking about spiritual gifts. There are whole denominations devoted to the cultivation of particular gifts and long, lengthy books have been written about the importance of spiritual gifts. And they are important. They are gifts from the Holy Spirit. We ought to unwrap and discover and use the gifts God gives us here and now. But those things, as important as they are, are the stuff of spiritual childhood. Prophecies? They will cease. Tongues? They will be stilled. Knowledge? It will pass away. None of those things will last.

And why is that? It’s because all of those things are imperfect, partial. Paul puts it this way: “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears” (13:10). Spiritual gifts are the things of “childhood” because everything here, in the situations where we need and use spiritual gifts, is imperfect. It’s incomplete. It’s just, as C. S. Lewis once said, the prelude to the real story, the perfect story. So, Corinthians, as much as you fight and fuss over which gift is most important or which leader is the best or which lifestyle is really, really Christian—as much as you argue over those things, ultimately those things don’t matter. They are the stuff of childhood, and they are passing away. Only one thing will last. Only one thing ultimately matters.

Then, Paul changes metaphors and begins to talk about a mirror. Mirrors were something the Corinthians knew, and knew well. Corinth was famous for its manufacture of mirrors, but their mirrors were nothing like what we know today. Our type of mirrors didn’t come into existence until the thirteenth century. The mirrors made in Corinth were made from highly polished metal, which, at best, gave off an imperfect and slightly distorted reflection. It could be difficult to make out what you were looking at sometimes. Even with mirrors today, everything is reversed when you look in a mirror. It might take a moment or two to figure out how things really are (Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians, pg. 125; Wright, Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians, pg. 178). Paul uses that imagery as he describes the difference between this world and the next, between the world of now and the world of then. Now, he says, we see imperfectly. We see only a reflection. We see a distorted image. Even those things we are so certain of are not really what they seem to be. But then, he says, when completeness comes, when God’s kingdom arrives fully, then we will see things the way they are, the way they have always been. Then, we will have grown up.

And more than that, he says in that day we will be “fully known” (13:12). He's not talking about just knowing someone on the surface. This isn’t a “Facebook” friend we’re talking about here. You know, I have over a thousand Facebook friends, and most of them I’ve actually met, and some I’ve known for years. But there are very few on that list that I really know well. We’ve “dumbed down” the meaning of “friend” or of knowing someone today and turned it into having some sort of internet connection. We’ve taken friendship to the lowest common denominator. The “knowing” Paul is talking about here is beyond knowing someone’s name or recognizing their face or even knowing a few facts about them. This is the kind of knowing that few ever come close to during their earthly lives; it’s a kind of knowing that discerns a person’s character, their inner life. It’s a kind of knowing that only comes when we allow someone to get close to us, to share our hopes and dreams, to be there in times of fear and sorrow. Not even husbands and wives always get to this level of knowing, but on that final day, when perfection comes, when completeness arrives, when we finally really grow up, we will be fully known. God himself will know us, will see us for who we really are. Now, that can be a comfort or it can be a frightening thought. God will know us for who we really are, because there’s no pretending with God. He is, ultimately, the only one who can really know us that well, for he made us and sees through us. Part of our calling, our task, here during our lives is to grow up into the kind of person God is calling us to be. That’s what Paul has been describing all the way through this chapter. The kind of person God wants us to become, the kind he wants to “fully know” on that day is one who is possessed by love, by agape. That is spiritual maturity.

And that’s why, in the very last verse (and perhaps the most well-known verse), Paul says this: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (13:13). Love is the only thing that will last forever. You see, in eternity, we won’t need faith or hope. The letter to the Hebrews says that “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith and hope are tied together, both rooted in things we long for, we hope for, things we know but can’t prove or see. But in the end, we will see Jesus. We will receive the end result of our faith, the salvation of our souls (cf. 1 Peter 1:9). There will be no need for faith or hope any longer. But love will endure. Love will stand. Love will last. So, friends, if agape love is the result and the evidence of our maturity, wouldn’t we be wise to begin cultivating it here and now? That’s why we’ve spent so many weeks considering what this kind of life looks like. And that’s supposed to be the reason the church exists, to call all believers to that kind of life. I hope the question we’ve been asking ourselves as we’ve worked through what this kind of love, this kind of life, looks like is this: how are we doing? How do we measure up? In the same way that we measure children as they are growing, maybe even putting marks on the wall for each year (though certainly not in a parsonage!), we would do well to do the same thing for our spiritual growth. How well are we growing? Do we love more now than we did a year ago? Because only agape love will endure.

You see, growing up means we take responsibility. We live and act like an adult. We learn to live in peace with one another. We honor others. We stop rejoicing when evil happens and instead rejoice in the truth. We persevere even when it seems difficult or impossible. Ultimately, as Paul has been trying to say, growing up means we become more and more like Jesus and live out the “greatest of these”—sacrificial agape love. Thankfully, though, we don’t have to do that all alone. The church is the community of believers meant not only to reach out to the least, the last and the lost, but to encourage and help each other along the way. This morning, three young men will do as many of you have done in the past. They will make vows as they become a formal part of the church, and you will make promises to them as well—vows and promises rooted in agape. Confirmation is not an ending, but a step along the way. A new beginning. So, for a few moments this morning, let’s wrap up this series and this sermon by considering what vows are made and how they shape us in agape love.

The first promise we make is to pray. Prayer helps us fall in love with God. If we’re going to have a relationship with someone, we have to talk to them and with them. How long would any human relationship last if we never talked to the other person? I actually had a person unfriend me on Facebook because I hadn’t directly communicated with them for a specified length of time. The statute of limitations ran out! And yet, how often do we communicate with God? We claim we want to know what God wants for our lives, and we complain that we never “hear” from God or don’t know what God’s will is. The first question we have to ask anytime we hear that is this: are you talking to him? How is your prayer life? And what do you pray for? The Barna Group found in a recent survey that 84% of Americans report praying in the last week, but the vast majority of those prayers are requests for God to do something for them or give something to them. Now, there’s nothing wrong with prayers like that; Jesus encourages us to ask (cf. Matthew 7:7). But imagine if you had a friend and the only time they ever talked to you was when they wanted something. Or maybe you have a college student and the only time you hear from them is when they want money! How would that affect you? Much more meaningful are the times that friend or that student just calls to say hello, or talk, or stop by and spend time with you for no overriding reason. The primary purpose for prayer is to get to know God, to fall in love with God, but only 38% of those asked stated this as the primary purpose of prayer.

Prayer is often frustrating for me, to be honest, because my mind wanders and I have trouble staying on topic. I was reading this last week about a small group at a church that decided to practice silence as prayer for six weeks. Every week they got together and at least 30 minutes of their gathering was spent in silent prayer. Now, I’m an introvert and I think that would still drive me crazy. But every single one of them reported at the end of the six weeks that the silent time was what they needed to really connect with God. Does your promise to pray help you love God more?

The second promise we make in the church is presence. That means showing up. And that promise is not just so that, at end of the year, we have good statistics. First of all, it’s because being together and worshipping together is a Biblical command. Hebrews 10:25 tells us not to give up the habit of meeting together, and the verse before it tells us why we gather: “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (10:24). We gather together, we show up, we practice presence so that we can learn to love each other, and when we learn to love each other, we learn to better love God. 1 John 4:20 says, “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” That’s why Christianity is not a solo sport; it’s meant to be practiced and lived in community. Some folks will say, “I can worship God by watching the TV preacher,” or “I can love God out in nature,” and yes, you can sense God’s presence any of those places. God is present everywhere. But the Bible reminds us we can’t really learn to love God until we learn to love his people. And that requires community. That requires showing up and putting up with all sorts of folks, even those you don’t like (maybe especially those you don’t like!). Learning to love others so that we can love God—that requires presence.

Prayers, presence. And then there are gifts. Yes, this is the place where money comes in. Or, really, this is the place where the things that are most precious and important to us come in and, for most of us in this culture, that’s money. It’s taking what matters the most to us and laying it on God’s altar, breaking the hold whatever it is has on us. No, this is not about paying the church’s bills, although we all do like heat and air conditioning and water and a nice building and parking lot and nursery attendants and music and all the rest. But the gifts vow is about responding to the God who has given us everything we have. Giving back to God, as we try to say every week when we take the offering, is our opportunity to express our love to God and to his kingdom. When you love someone, you often will give them gifts, expressions of love, representative of your relationship. When we love God, we give back to him for the sake of his kingdom here on earth. We entrust what we have to Christ’s church and give up the control we tend to grab toward or try to hold onto with our money.

Some folks are very legalistic about this, and some folks would rather ignore this. But giving is a Biblical command. The tithe, or 10% of our income, is specifically commanded in the Old Testament. Farmers and shepherds in those days would give “first fruits,” which meant they would give the first of their crops or herds back to God, as a way of acknowledging their dependence on God. By the time we get to the New Testament, the tithe isn’t talked about much, though it’s not specifically done away with, either. Rather, Paul seems to set a new standard: “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:6-7). In other words, what we give shows our level of love for and trust in God, and what God is looking for are people who give cheerfully, or, as the original word indicates, hilariously. Gifts demonstrate our love for God.

And then there’s service, which is another way we express our love for God, only this time we’re demonstrating that in the way we treat each other. Service means those practical ways we live out our faith by treating others with kindness and, yes, agape love. You probably remember Jesus’ example at the very last meal he shared with his disciples before his crucifixion. When they were all at the table, and everyone was arguing over which one of them was the greatest, the best disciple, Jesus, without saying a word, got up from the table, wrapped a towel around his waist, and quietly washed the feet of every single person in the room. Even Judas, who was about to betray him. Every single one. Twenty-four dirty, smelly feet. The Son of God got down on his knees and washed them all, doing what those proud disciples hadn’t thought to do, extending a kindness all of them felt too good to do. And when he finishes and sits down, Jesus asks, “Do you understand what I have done for you?…I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13:1-17). The things no one else wants to do, the things that aren’t glamorous, the things that no one may ever notice—those things, Jesus says, are demonstrations of our love for him. So we serve the poor, the hungry, the needy, the prisoner, the sick and the unloved. We collect backpack supplies for neglected and abused children. We serve a funeral dinner, knowing no one may ever know how hard we worked. We teach a Sunday School class week in and week out with little thanks. We pick up garbage along the road because creation matters and God is going to redeem that, too. We recycle. We care for the animals. We do our best to not pollute. We serve in any way we can because, as the hymn says, this is our Father’s world. It’s not ours. Our taking care of it and the creatures and the people in it, is an act of love to him.

So…prayers, presence, gifts, service. And witness. Witness is simply following the last command Jesus gave, to make disciples of all nations (cf. Matthew 28:16-20). It’s not about standing on the street corner or beating people over the head with your Bible. Witness is inviting others to learn to love Jesus. So we witness with our lives, living in a way that is consistent with the Gospel, making these other four vows a priority. We witness with our words and the way we talk about others, choosing to love others with our words rather than beating them up as most of our culture seems to do today. We witness with our service. We invite people to come to church or family activities with us. (By the way, when was the last time you invited someone to come with you to this place?) Witness is simply telling someone what you know, or who you know. A person who is called as a witness in a trial is asked about what they saw, what they know of the person accused, whether or not the accusations are true. A witness for Jesus can only speak of what they know, who they know, and what difference that has made in their lives. When I was going to college, there was a big push toward what is called “apologetics,” or having good, solid, reasoned answers to the questions of the faith. And there is still a place for that. Perhaps it’s still big on college campuses. But more and more we’re realizing that what people really want to know is your story. What difference has Jesus made in your life? That’s how we can best invite someone to love Jesus, by telling our stories, because one thing no one can argue with is your story. They may disagree with it or just not like it, but they can’t argue with it because it’s yours. It’s your story. A vow to witness is a call to share your story, to invite others to love Jesus.

Prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness. Promises of love we all are called to make, whether we are a formal member of the church or not, whether we are being confirmed today or not. We’re all called to grow up, to grow more and more in love and living out that love in the world that is so often unloving. It’s as simple—and as difficult—as that, because in the end, only love will last. Love is the greatest of these, so as we close this morning, I invite you to hear, one more time, Paul’s famous description of love, and as I read this, when you hear the word “love,” mentally put your name in there. For this is who God is calling you to be as you grow up in him. Hear, then, these words:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails (13:4-8a).

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love (13:13).

Amen.

Warmed Hearts

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Acts 2:1-8; John 20:19-23

May 24, 2015 (Pentecost/Aldersgate Day) • Portage First UMC

Fifty days had passed since the world had changed. Fifty days since Jesus was raised from the dead. That day had rocked their world in so many ways, not the least of which was what happened on the evening of that first day of the week. He had shown up again in the midst of a locked room (they had to keep it locked in case the Romans came looking for them), and he had given some clarity to their mission. In the midst of their joy, Jesus had said he was “sending” them. In fact, he said he was sending them in the same way his Father had sent him. He had always been the sent one; now he was transferring that authority and his mission to them (Card, John: The Gospel of Wisdom, pg. 208). They were to be Jesus in the world, and their mission, he had said, was to announce the forgiveness of sins. They weren’t the ones to forgive sins; that was God’s doing. But they were to announce it and actively live as if people were actually forgiven. They were to warn the world that sin was deadly business but also let the world know that there was a cure to the death that sin brought (cf. Tenney, “The Gospel of John,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 9, pg. 193; Wright, John for Everyone: Part Two, pg. 150). And the way he did that was to breathe on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (20:22).

Now, for John’s readers, that ought to remind them of something. John begins his story of Jesus by going all the way back to creation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1). Now, here at the end of his Gospel, John takes us back to creation, reminding us how, in Genesis, God breathed life into the man and the woman, changing a pile of dust into a living being. Life came from the very breath of God. So, as Jesus prepares to leave his disciples, he, the Son of God, breathes new life into these dusty men, giving them the Holy Spirit so that they can fully live the way Jesus taught them to, so that they can announce forgiveness to everyone they meet (cf. Wright 150). The promised Holy Spirit is to be the presence of Jesus in the life of the believer.

Fifty days later, on the day of Pentecost, those same disciples would experience that in a powerful way. They were once again gathered in the upper room, the place where they had last been with Jesus before his death, and they had been praying for the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise for quite some time now. I wonder how many of us today would have the perseverance to keep praying for the same thing day after day for fifty days, but these folks did. They kept at it. They never quit believing God would come through on his promise, and they were determined to stay in this place until it happened—whatever “it” was. The book of Acts does tell us that they took care of one item of business during this time: they replaced Judas, who had killed himself after betraying Jesus. They elected a man named Matthias to be the twelfth disciple (Acts 1:26), and together the twelve, along with other friends, stayed and prayed and hoped and waited.

Pentecost was a big deal. It was an agricultural festival, held every year fifty days after Passover, on the seventh Sabbath after that big holiday. Traditionally, it had been the time when the “firstfruits” of the spring harvest were presented to God in hopes that such an offering would guarantee a fruitful “rest of the harvest,” but over time Pentecost had also become a celebration of God’s law, the Torah, given to the people. It was the annual renewal of their covenant with God—sort of like what we do at New Year’s with the Wesley Covenant Prayer. Because of that, it became one of the three great “pilgrim festivals” of Judaism; it was one of the times you were expected to make the journey to Jerusalem for the celebration (Tenney 269). And so Jerusalem is packed with people during this time. And the disciples are camped out in the upper room, probably on Mount Zion, near the Temple, where all of the celebration will be taking place. They’re praying and waiting, and then suddenly, it happens.

Listen again to how Luke describes it: “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (2:2-4). I’ve tried to picture that in my mind, and movies and television shows have tried to portray it. The new show, A.D. had this take on it. VIDEO. But I doubt that we ever really are able to capture the power of what happens in that moment. What Jesus promised with his breath now comes in a rush of wind and tongues of fire. It shook the house and the fire rested over their heads without burning down anything. Wind and fire had long been signs of God’s presence (Longenecker, “The Acts of the Apostles,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 9, pg. 270), but now these symbols come to the disciples in a very personal way. No longer would God be distant; God had come, in Jesus, to dwell among them, each and every one of them. And he has called them each to a mission: to announce the power of forgiveness to everyone.

That is, after all, the reason for the primary gift they each received on that day. Luke says that when the Spirit came, these disciples were given the ability to “speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (2:4). There are a couple of things we need to clear up about what happens here. First of all, this is not the same thing as the gift of tongues that Paul talks about later in his letters. What happens here is that the disciples are given the ability, supernaturally, to speak in other languages—specifically, the languages that were represented by the crowd in Jerusalem for the festival. They’re given the ability to communicate the Gospel and announce forgiveness to every person who is gathered there—in their native language. There isn’t any indication that the disciples retained that ability after this day; God granted them a gift for this particular time. Second, some claim that this gift is the primary and required gift, the true evidence of being “filled with the Spirit.” But Paul says otherwise. In fact, he says he would rather speak five words that people can understand than ten thousand words in a tongue (1 Corinthians 14:18-19). The real evidence of the Spirit’s presence in a person’s life is the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience and all the rest (Galatians 5:22-23). Remember what we talked about a few weeks ago: we’re all given different gifts, and no one gift is given to every person. But together, we’re given gifts for the building up of the church and for our witness to the world (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:27). It’s God’s choice to hand out gifts that will be useful in each context to help people hear the good news of the Gospel, the hope of forgiveness. That, I believe, is why Luke emphasizes this gift was given “as the Spirit enabled” (2:4).

Pentecost was an amazing experience that sent these disciples out to share the good news. If you read on through the chapter, you’ll see Peter preaching the good news, as others did undoubtedly, and the report is that 3,000 people became Christians that day (2:41). Three thousand people who responded to a single sermon because the disciples had been filled with the Spirit and had their hearts warmed with God’s grace. Can we imagine such a response today?

You know, that kind of experience and that kind of preaching is a part of our heritage. The founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, had his own Pentecost experience, and it happened on this day, May 24, in 1738. Wesley had been a missionary to what we know as the state of Georgia but he had been a dismal failure there. He ran into several problems while trying to be a pastor to the colonists, not the least of which had to do with a woman. He fell in love with Sophie Hopkey, and she loved him as well. But Wesley was not interested in marriage, while Sophie was. So Sophie began a relationship with William Williamson, became engaged to him and then married him. When the two came to worship, Wesley barred them from receiving communion because he was so hurt by what had happened. People were already frustrated with Wesley’s strict way of practicing his faith, and this little incident just ignited a firestorm which led to Wesley fleeing the American colonies by night and heading back to England. He returned home convinced he was an utter failure.

Wesley already had doubts about his own salvation and his faith in Christ, and his experience in Georgia just increased those doubts. He had seen the faith of a group called the Moravians, a faith that stood strong in the midst of storms, and he envied that sort of faith. But John Wesley, preacher’s kid and ordained clergyman, had serious doubts. Yet he kept preaching, even when he felt so little faith within him. Then came May 24, 1738. That evening, he was invited to what we might call a small group or a FISH group meeting where…well, actually, let me read you Wesley’s own description of the event, because as good Methodists, these are words you ought to know. Wesley wrote about it this way:

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart.

While someone was reading from a commentary—and I don’t know much more boring reading anywhere—written by a monk-turned-reformer from the 16th century, Wesley felt his heart “strangely warmed,” and it wasn’t from the pizza the night before. Scholars debate what exactly happened in that moment, whether this was Wesley’s “conversion” moment or whether he finally had a “feeling” of salvation. But to me, it’s clear that what happened was at least a confirmation of Wesley’s call. In that moment, he had the feelings he had longed for for so long, and he was able to preach the Gospel with new strength. A similar experience had happened to his brother Charles just three days before, and out of those two moments, God sparked a revival that saw the power of the Holy Spirit spread like fire across England and around the world. Because of May 24, 1738, men and women were sent around the world to fulfill their call and share the good news (Hamilton, Revival, pgs. 62-70).

One of the hallmarks of the Methodist movement has always been the warm hearted experience, that there is more than just knowing about Jesus. We can know Jesus, personally. But our faith is about more than just knowing Jesus; it’s also about sharing Jesus. That’s why the three statements we repeat here most often are, “Love God, Love Others, Offer Jesus.” That’s more than just something that looks nice on the wall or on our stationary. It’s meant to be our way of life, our calling. It’s not just something the pastors do or the lay leadership does. This is the calling of every single person who claims the name of Jesus, who wants to follow Jesus. All are called, and that belief and practice is rooted all the way back in Biblical times. As I mentioned, in the latter part of Acts 2, Peter stands up and begins to preach to the crowd. And in the midst of that impromptu sermon, he quotes the Old Testament prophet Joel, using these words: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy” (Acts 2:17-18). That was a revolutionary idea, even in Peter’s day. First of all, the Spirit is promised to all people. Not some. Not special people. Not just priests or kings or prophets. The Holy Spirit fell on the disciples but wasn’t just promised to the disciples. The Spirit is promised to all. And not just men. Peter seems to emphasize that the day for segregation based on gender is over. Men and women alike were to receive the power and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Let me put all that in simpler terms: everyone is called. The Spirit calls everyone who wants to follow Jesus to be involved in the ministry of forgiveness, to share the good news that forgiveness is possible.

All are called. You are called to something. The Spirit has given you gifts and will give you power for particular ministry. For some of you, that might be in the occupation you are currently in. For others, it might be a ministry that is outside of your regular work. And for others, it might even be something that leads you to some sort of full- or part-time ministry. And for some, that call might come in a blinding flash of light or a clear, unmistakable voice from God. That was not the case for me. I’ve said God had to work extra hard on me because I didn’t get it right away. He had to gradually lead me along the path to where I am today. I grew up in the church, and my family was there, it seemed, every time the doors were open. I was the kid who, with two or three friends, would sit on the left hand side of the congregation, near the front, and we would use our new, really cool digital watches to time the pastor’s prayer. And Pastor Amos could really pray—sometimes 10 minutes or more! But church was a very comfortable place for me, and I gave my life to Jesus early on, then tried to be involved in various places at my home church.

I very clearly remember my mom asking me one day if I had ever considered becoming a pastor. And since I had no idea what a pastor did other than preach on Sunday morning, I remember telling her no, that would be much too boring a job for me! Now, Mom has always had a keen sense of the way things ought be; she even claims that she pointed me in Cathy’s direction, but we dispute how that all happened. Anyway, once I went to Ball State, I got involved in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, where I was asked to lead a small group Bible study and, by my sophomore year, to be the president of the chapter. God was helping others see leadership gifts in me that, at that time, I certainly didn’t see in myself. But it was in InterVarsity that I began to see worship as something other than an hour on Sunday to be endured. Worship became very important to me as we gathered as college students on Thursday evenings on campus for worship, and I actively sought out worship in a local church on Sunday morning despite not having a way to get there. No car on campus. And I found I really loved preparing for and leading the Bible study that met in my room on the second floor of Swinford Hall.

It was over Christmas break in 1987, when I attended a missions conference in Urbana, Illinois, that I can say I first really felt a call to ministry. On the final night, Tony Campolo preached the communion service, and at the end, he asked everyone who sensed God calling them to some sort of ministry to stand. Without much thinking about it, Cathy and I both found ourselves on our feet. I had no idea what that meant at that point, but it seemed right. In that moment, I thought God was calling me to work with InterVarsity as a campus minister. That was the world I knew, and so I began to make plans to follow that career path. Except there was the little matter of marriage. InterVarsity, wisely so, wouldn’t let your first year on staff with them coincide with the first year of marriage, as they believed that was too much stress and change all at once. So I made plans to get married and go to seminary for a year, to see if they knew anything, and then I would go on staff with InterVarsity. And I think God was up there chuckling all the time, because he kept calling and directing and wooing us—me, in particular—toward pastoral ministry. Cathy and I hadn’t been married very long when, one evening at dinner, I told her I was sensing perhaps God calling me to be a pastor. And, at that moment, she smiled and said, “I’ve been hoping you would realize that.” Yes, husbands, our wives are often wise far beyond us, but the really wise ones allow we husbands to think that we came up with that idea all on our own!

And so, that fall, we moved to Wilmore, Kentucky, where we spent four wonderful years in seminary. God used that time to clarify and refine my call and place within me a deep love for the local church. He also used that time to confirm my call to pastoral ministry through a number of people, not the least of which was my home church as well as the church I was working in at the time. You see, we believe in our tradition that God calls people into various kinds of ministry, and the church confirms. In the United Methodist Church, we have a lengthy process for getting to ordination, and while sometimes some of it seems like mere busywork, the point is at least supposed to be helping each person clarify their call. That’s the question that is most often asked of each person who wants to pursue ministry: tell us about your call. Because God is the one who calls, and this is not just a job with good benefits. In fact, I remember my first senior pastor, Tom Rough, driving me around Muncie when we arrived to begin serving at High Street Church, and out of all the things Tom told me that day, one thing still remains with me: “You’d better be called to this work or it will eat you alive.” He’s right. And there are many times I’ve had to go back to that sense of call in order to keep from being eaten alive. God calls, the church confirms, and the Spirit empowers.

Because we’re all called. God has a ministry for each and every one of us. For every person in that Upper Room, God had a ministry in mind. Some of them we know about from the Scriptures, and others only from tradition. The stories of Peter and Paul are written down, but from church history we know that James (son of Zebedee) went to Spain, Nathaniel went to Armenia, Matthew went to Ethiopia and Thomas went to India (cf. Kalas, The Thirteen Apostles). They went wherever the Spirit led them, seeking to be faithful to the God who called them. John Wesley rode all over England, preaching outside in any location he could even after being turned out of most of the churches. But he never let that rejection stop him because he had this overriding sense of God’s call on his life. His heart, once strangely warmed, never cooled. He was determined to preach Christ’s forgiveness wherever and whenever he could.

We’re all called, but some people live their entire lives and never prayerfully consider God’s call on their life, or where it is God is calling you to share the good news of Jesus’ love and grace and forgiveness. This morning, I want to invite you to do that. Where is God calling you? As I said, for many of you, that may very well be in the place where you currently work. We need Christian teachers and accountants and mill workers and secretaries and lawyers and doctors and nurses and—well, I could go on and on because the truth is, we need Christian everything. We need folks who will shine the light of Jesus and spread the good news about forgiveness into the midst of a world that is often unforgiving and very, very broken. Has God called you to the place you are in for this time, this day? And what ways can God use you there? You may not be preaching at the water cooler, but there are innumerable ways and unnumbered opportunities for you to share your faith and point others toward that message of forgiveness. What if, each morning as you went off to work, you prayed something like what Frank Laubach used to pray: “God, what can you and I do together today?”

But there may be, in fact, some of you called to specific ministry, maybe even to pastoral ministry. I’ve got, maybe, twenty years until retirement, and so I know I’m past the halfway point in my ministry (though, in my heart, I’m still one of the “young clergy”). That’s about where most of our ordained clergy are today. The average age for a United Methodist Elder (which is what I am) is 55, the highest it has been in our history. Not only is our denomination aging, so are our clergy, and we’re not doing well at replacing ourselves. The number of “young elders” (defined as under age 35) has dropped from over 3,200 in 1985 (when I graduated from high school) to under 1,000 today. If the church is going to move forward, we need people to prayerfully consider if God might be calling you to full-time ministry. If you feel that nudge, I encourage you to talk to me, or to Pastor Deb, and let us help you discern where that call might lead you. We’re all called, and some are called to specialized ministry.

But it’s also true that the church is called to announce the message that forgiveness and salvation found in Jesus Christ. As one author puts it, the church is “an instrument of service, called by God to take up the mission formerly entrusted to Israel” (Longenecker 271). That’s what happens in Acts 2; the church, through the disciples, answers its own call to do what God called Abraham to do centuries before, to recognize that they are blessed to be a blessing (cf. Genesis 12:2-3). They are to bless all the nations of the world. They’re called—we’re called—to help the people hear the good news in their own language. That language might be the language of technology, or the language of music, or the language of writing books and teaching lessons and standing up for justice issues. The church is called to be God’s visible kingdom on earth, to call the world to repentance and new life. For our church, in this challenging time of transition, it’s a good time to reassess if we are hearing God’s call and if we’re answering it fully as a church. Where is God leading us from this point? What is God’s future for us as a church? Those are the sorts of things I want to encourage you to be thinking about and praying about, especially over the next month, and then share those things, the call God brings to your heart, with Pastor Mark when you gather in your cottage meetings. God has called him here to lead you into the future, to help you hear the call for the next stage of ministry here. Be listening. Have an open heart and open ears for God’s call.

Those first disciples on that first Pentecost did that, and the Spirit took them literally around the world as the church saw explosive growth. God’s Spirit may not take you around the world, but where in your world is God calling you to step out, take a risk, share the message of forgiveness in a language the people around you can understand? Where is God calling you to make a difference for his kingdom? It’s great to think about it here on Sunday morning, but what will you do when you step out of here? What will be your first step? One of the disciples, Peter, is a case study for what can happen. Peter was never afraid to speak up, but he didn’t always engage his brain before opening his mouth. And yet he, I believe, desperately wanted to serve Jesus, even to the point that when he and the rest of the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water, he wanted to do that, too. And when Jesus invited him to come, he didn’t hesitate to step out on the water. Of course, we tend to focus on the fact that he took his eyes off of Jesus and he sank, but we forget the first part, and that is that he did it. For a few brief moments, he actually walked on the water. Empowered by Jesus, he did it because he was willing to take that first step (cf. Matthew 14:22-33). In fact, it’s my belief that, after the resurrection, when the disciples have all gone back to fishing and Jesus appears on the shore, the reason Peter puts his clothes on before jumping into the water (cf. John 21:7) is because he’s thinking, “This time I’m going to do it. I’m going to walk on the water the whole way back to shore” (cf. Card, The Parable of Joy, pg. 249). Of course, he doesn’t, and his clothes get wet. But Peter is determined to serve Jesus is whatever way he can, and he’ll always be willing to take that first step. Even on the day of Pentecost, Peter is the one who speaks up, who preaches what is, essentially, the first Christian sermon. All because he took that first step. And when he sank, he later still took another step. His heart was warmed by Jesus, and he couldn’t help but share that news with others. So what will you do with your warmed heart? How will you respond, outside of this place, to Jesus’ call? Let’s pray.

In the World, But...

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8a; 1 Timothy 2:1-7

May 17, 2015 • Portage First UMC

His was a public life, and for a long time he had lived for the admiration and the status that a life in politics brought. He had grown up in a life of privilege and had been educated at a prestigious university, but during those years he had not been a serious student. He would stay out late at night at parties and then come back to his home and stay up the rest of the night talking with friends. And while he wasn’t worried about his classes, one of his friends commented that while he enjoyed their conversations, staying up that late didn’t do him much good in the lecture hall the next morning. And on he went, even being elected to a high position in the government where he formed a close friendship with the future leader of the country. That’s what you did, after all. You made friends who could help you down the road in your own career and ambitions. In fact, that’s how he spent most of the early years in the government, only doing things that would draw attention to himself. In later years, he admitted he did nothing in those first years to help anyone or accomplish anything of any value. And it was in the midst of that time that he was hit by a crisis of conscience.

That period of time was difficult and dark, because he began to see how he had wasted his life in so many ways. Later, he would say that no one ever suffered as much as he did during those months. And then came Easter, 1786, and something changed. It was like a light switch came on for young William Wilberforce, and he experienced a spiritual rebirth. As some have observed, it wasn’t so much that Wilberforce found God, but that God found him. And his life was different from that moment on. He even thought that perhaps he should leave politics and pursue full-time ministry, but friends, including William Pitt, the future prime minister of England, and Pastor John Newton, the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” talked him out of it. Why couldn’t he serve God by being in the public service? Wilberforce began to see then that God had put him in the Parliament for such a time as this, and he took as the goal of his life two things: the abolition of the slave trade (which was deeply entrenched in England at that time) and the reformation of manners (or the encouragement of a society that was moral and virtuous). The abolition of the slave trade he accomplished, though only a few days before his death. The reformation of manners was a constant struggle, but Wilberforce never doubted that his true calling from God was to serve where God had placed him and to love the culture, his culture, back to life. He was, we might say, willing to live in the world while not being of the world (cf. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/131christians/activists/wilberforce.html).

Wilberforce is one of my heroes, and his life in so many ways exemplifies what we’ve been talking about these last few weeks. We’ve been trying to see what “a more excellent way” of life looks like, especially as Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 13. We’ve looked at what this sort of love Paul describes, this agape love, looks like in the church and in our families, and this morning I want to broaden that out to the culture in general. But the way I want to get at that this morning is to look at it through the lens of politics and government. Many of us claim to hate politics, though I had a friend in seminary who absolutely loved the push and pull of politics and would record the news every night so as not to miss any of the political discussion. But many of us say we don’t want much to do with politics, and we’ve been consistently living that out lately. Last year’s midterm election, held in November, saw the lowest voter turnout in Indiana history. Only 29 percent of registered voters across the state bothered to turn out to cast their ballot. According to the Indianapolis Star, that makes our state number one in voter apathy. So…yay?…for us! We’re number one at being the worst! And it hasn’t gotten any better. In this year’s primaries, held just a couple of weeks ago and mainly centered around local offices, Porter County saw a whopping 14.5% turnout, according to a report on the county website. That means only 14.5% of those who had the chance to cast a ballot bothered to do so (those of you who didn’t have any elections in your area are off the hook!). 14.5%. That, to me, is an indication of the level of love we have for our culture. Granted, we don’t have any way to track the numbers of Christians versus non-Christians who voted, but we as a faith community tend to reflect rather than lead the general population.

Some of that happens because we have begun to believe that our votes don’t count; they don’t matter. But Chuck Colson, who received a felony conviction because of his part in Watergate, believed otherwise. Before his death in 2012, Colson wrote these words: “Now is not the time to buy into the lie that your vote doesn’t really matter. As a result of my Watergate felony conviction, I lost the right to vote for 28 years. When my right was restored, I was able to vote in the 2000 presidential election. That year, the national election—the presidency—was determined by just 500 votes in Florida. Mine was one of those votes. So your vote does matter” (BreakPoint commentary). But the bigger question we want to answer this morning is this: how do we love our culture when it seems, so often, to be difficult to love or even when it seems unlovable altogether?

So, as we’ve done the last couple of weeks, let’s take just one verse from Paul here in 1 Corinthians 13 to examine this morning, and then I want to invite you to look at the rest of these verses this week in light of what we talk about this morning. Today, we’re going to focus on verse 5, where Paul says this: love “does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs” (13:5). Four qualities of love (in addition to the ones we’ve already discussed the past few weeks). What do these have to do with loving our culture, loving our world?

As with the latter part of verse 4, which we looked at last week, Paul focuses in these verses on things love is not. And remember, this “love” Paul is talking about is not the kind you find in the greeting cards or in the movies. This is agape—unconditional, no-strings-attached love. This is the kind of love God has for us, the same kind of love we are meant to reflect to each other and to the world. It’s a kind of love we don’t often experience, and they certainly weren’t experiencing it much in Corinth. That’s why Paul takes such great pains to tell the Corinthians—and generations of believers since—what real, true love looks like. So, Paul says, “love does not dishonor others.” Now, that was a huge thing in a culture like the ancient near east (and still today in the Middle East) which was built on honor. You didn’t do anything to dishonor those you loved; respect and honor were and are so central to the culture. And so you didn’t behave in a way that was unbecoming or that would reflect poorly on others. This is still rooted somewhat in our culture, like when as a teenager you were headed out for a night with friends and your father or mother says, “Remember who you are.” In other words, don’t behave in a way that’s going to embarrass your family. William Barclay translates this characteristic this way: “love does not behave gracelessly” (The Letters to the Corinthians, pg. 121). Or, to put it another way, love does not “dig in the bin of shame” (Green, To Corinth With Love, pg. 65).

When we’re thinking of the world of politics, that last image brings to mind the many, many politicians (who are supposed to be public servants, each and every one of them) who have been caught in various scandals. Leaders from both sides of the aisle have been caught and exposed in scandals of a sexual nature, an economic nature, or even just promising things to constituents that they then hide in other bills or they never come through with. The one who serves is meant to do so out of a love for the people, and if that love is present, you’re not digging in the bin of shame. You don’t do things that are going to dishonor those you serve. Now, for our part of that, for those of us who aren’t in elected office, we need to not be digging in the bin of shame by looking for problems or accusing people of things they have not done. It’s too easy to believe the press these days and convict someone before there is proof because American politics has largely become about image rather than substance. One bad report can be the end of a good leader’s career. Love does not dishonor others, and that applies to the leaders and to the led.

Then, Paul says, love is not self-seeking. The one who loves is not busy pursuing himself or herself, or constantly trying to gain advantage only for themselves. That’s what Wilberforce realized he spent most of his early life doing—pursuing his own privilege, his own advantage, his own pleasure. One Biblical scholar reminds us that there seem to be two distinct kinds of people in the world: “those who always insist upon their own privileges and those who always remember their responsibilities; those who are always thinking of what life owes them and those who never forget what they owe to life” (Barclay 122). Love is the second of each of those actions: remembering our responsibilities, remembering what we owe to life and, I would add, to God. The loving person puts others first; we’ve encountered this attitude of Paul’s about love in most every section of this letter, probably because this was the biggest problem underlying all the other problems in the church at Corinth. One way this showed up there is in the way they were practicing holy communion, of all things. We think of and practice communion as a rather orderly affair, but from what we can tell, in the early church, it was much more of a party, coupled with a dinner (called a “love feast”) and worship and then communion to wrap up their time together. But, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, that some weren’t content to wait for everyone to arrive, and people started bringing their own private dinners to the gathering without sharing with others, and then some would arrive late and the food would all be gone, and it was a mess. He puts it this way: “One person remains hungry and another gets drunk” (11:21). Now, he may be exaggerating (or not), but the point is the same: they’ve forgotten that in the very act Jesus gave them to bring them together they are drawing lines between the “haves” and the “have nots.” They are self-seeking rather than caring for all. And the question then comes to us as to whether we are the same. The loving person is other-seeking, other-pursuing rather than self-seeking.

Then, Paul really gets to meddling when he writes, “love is not easily angered.” This one hits close to home for me, because Cathy will tell you when I was younger I had a very quick temper. It was easy to get me angry, and I didn’t always handle it well. I’ve worked hard over the last many years to bring that under control, to submit that to the lordship of Jesus and let him control it, but it hasn’t been easy and sometimes that old person comes roaring out. And it doesn’t help that, as you may have noticed, we live in angry world. Turn on any news channel and you’ll often find taking heads yelling at each other. I look at faces as I pass people either when I’m walking or when I’m driving and many, many people seem to live in perpetual anger, like a pressure cooker just waiting to blow. As I wrote in my blog this week, we are a culture that is easily offended, easily angered. Watch the “tending topics” on Facebook or Twitter and you’ll see many stories about angry people, people offended over this or that little thing. Paul is saying here that love is not easily stirred up, that the “sharp retort” is never a loving response (cf. Green 65). In fact, as William Barclay pointed out, “When we lose our tempers, we lose everything” (Barclay 122). I learned that many times myself, but our culture hasn’t yet learned that.

Anger is everywhere today. It is estimated that half of all Americans experience road rage. One study, done in the Washington D.C.–area, showed that aggressive driving may be a factor in at least 50 percent of auto accidents. Another poll, done by the Gallup organization, revealed that drivers worry more about being the victims of road rage than about being hit by a drunk driver. The number one cause of firings in the workplace is inappropriately expressed anger. There are almost two million assaults every year in the workplace, and homicide is the second leading cause of death on the job. Maybe most revealing about where we’re headed is this study, done in a Massachusetts high school, which showed that 8 percent of the students there had been injured by or threatened with a weapon, 38 percent had been in a physical fight, 20 percent had carried some kind of weapon, and 10 percent had carried a gun to school. I doubt the statistics would be that different in our own high school. Love is not easily angered, but we are. What might happen if, in the midst of our angry world, we sought to be diffusers, people who are peacemakers (cf. Matthew 5:9), the ones Jesus calls “the children of God,” rather than inciters?

And that leads us to Paul’s last characteristic in this verse: love keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not count the bad. The word translated as “wrongs” is the Greek word kakos, which has come down to us in slang form as “caca.” Poop. (Can I say “poop” in a sermon?) It’s the nasty stuff that we like to hear and learn about people; it’s the stuff of which political campaigns today are made of. You announce your candidacy and immediately people start digging to find out the bad stuff—caca—about you. Paul says love keeps no record of such things. Love doesn’t pile up the poop. Unless you’re going to fertilize your garden, there’s no reason to. Michael Green translates it this way: love does not “brood over wrongs, real or imagined” (Green 65). Paul is reminding us that “Christian love has learned the great lesson of forgetting” (Barclay 122). In this, our example is God himself; the prophet Micah describes God’s action—God’s love—toward us this way: “You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). You see, it’s not so much that God forgets the caca in our lives as that he chooses not to remember. Love does that. Love keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not dishonor others, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs. Now, if you’re sitting there and thinking, “This is an impossible task,” then I believe you’re in the majority. Most of our world would say that this whole idea is caca; it’s rubbish (Wright, Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians, pg. 172). That is not how the world works! And that’s exactly Paul’s point. This is a “more excellent way” to live. It’s not ordinary. If it were ordinary, Paul wouldn’t have to describe it in such detail. But it’s extraordinary to live this way, to seek to love even when love doesn’t come back to us. And when we think of it in terms of government and politics, it’s even more impossible to imagine a world like this. As I mentioned earlier, our political process, like most of our world, has become more about image than about substance. The ads tell you more about what the “other” has done or is doing wrong than they do about what this candidate will do if elected. It’s image management; it’s subterfuge and it’s deception. But how can we possibly make a difference? What can we do to show love in the midst of a loveless world? I want to suggest a couple of responses, a couple of solutions especially as we vote in a local election this year and as we ramp up for a presidential election next year.

First, in a letter Paul wrote to his son in the faith, Timothy, Paul gives one clear and overriding response we ought to have to our world in general and the government in particular. Timothy was a young man who had been converted under Paul’s ministry, and Paul had left him in Ephesus as the pastor there (1:3). This letter was written late in Paul’s life (cf. TNIV Study Bible, pg. 2027), just as persecution of the church was beginning to increase, and the temptation was great for some people to compromise their faith. Paul writes to Timothy to encourage the church to hold fast to what they believed, and then he says something that’s rather surprising. Well, maybe not surprising to us, but more than likely surprising to those in Ephesus. Paul says they are to pray for kings, emperors, all those in authority, anyone who has power to end their lives. Pray for them. Ephesus was a Roman city, a cosmopolitan city that, in the first century, was on the coast, and all sorts of influences came into that city. There are still altars standing there that were dedicated to various Roman and pagan gods and citizens were asked, or encouraged, or required to pray to the emperor as a god. But Paul calls the believers there to stand firm, be committed and pray to the true God for these civil authorities that are trying to pressure them to give up their faith or their life. Lift them up to God our Savior, Paul says, as he reminds the Ephesians that Caesar isn’t the savior (cf. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Pastoral Letters, pg. 20). Lift them up in prayer, even if you don’t think they deserve it. Pray that they may be or become people who pursue holiness and godliness.

The next time you’re tempted to complain about the president or Congress or the Supreme Court, the governor or the mayor, stop and ask if you’ve prayed for them lately. We like to complain more than we like to pray. Complaining is easier, and it’s more fun. But it is not the loving response. There is a place for civil discourse; there is a place for discussing issues. But there is an even bigger place for prayer. Pray that God will move, that God will work in and among the lives of our leaders. There are times when I don’t agree with what this politician or leader does, and there are times I want to try to tell God what he needs to do with those people. Even prayer can become complaining! But I’ve tried, over the years, to begin to pray for particular things, that our leaders would live in righteousness and that they would pursue justice. Those are things, I know, that please God’s heart. So we pray for righteous and holy lives for our leaders, and for all who desire to be leaders, from the very top all the way down to the leaders of our community and of our church. Do our prayers outweigh our complaints? When was the last time you prayed for our leaders, for our government?

The second response, which Paul does not mention (mainly, I think, because he did not live in a republic but in an empire), is to get out and vote. When I was in seminary, I worked at the Seminary Post Office and got to interact with most everyone in the school at one time or another. I remember one year when there was a presidential election, and somehow I got in the habit of asking everyone who came to the door of the SPO if they had voted. One guy seemed surprised I would ask. “Don’t you want to know who I’m voting for before you tell me to go vote?” And that response sort of took me back. There was a mindset among some at the seminary that there were right ways and wrong ways to vote, so I had to stop and think about what he said for a moment, and then I said, “No, I don’t care who you vote for. Well, I do, but I wouldn’t presume to tell you who to vote for. I just care that you vote.” I don’t know if he did or not, but that conversation has guided me for a long time. The key is to exercise our civic duty. Even though the Bible doesn’t talk about voting in particular, it is clear that we should fulfill our duty to our culture as long as it doesn’t interfere with our responsibility to the Kingdom of God. We have a marvelous freedom, and it is the loving response to our culture to vote, to exercise that freedom.

Now, as an aside, let me address a complaint we Christians often hear from the world, that we’re just trying to control things so we can cram our faith down everyone’s throats. If we were really doing that, we should back off because that’s not the loving attitude. Instead, we invite people to follow Jesus, to get to know him, not to follow a religion or even a church. But that doesn’t seem to be the way the vast majority of Christians approach the culture. If anything, we’ve been too afraid and too passive and allowed others to be aggressive in their approach to us. Chuck Colson, in words that still ring true today, put it this way: “When a rabid secularist tells you to stop forcing your religion down his throat—simply correct him. You might say, ‘Excuse me, but who is suing the government to remove crosses from cemeteries? Who has filed lawsuits to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance? Who’s trying to tell doctors and nurses and pharmacists that they have to participate in medical procedures that violate their religious conscience? Who’s banning Bibles from schools? In other words, who is forcing their point of view on whom?’” Good questions. Our calling is to pray, vote, and love.

And the result, Paul says, will be something we can’t help but desire. He says we will be able, then, to live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness (2:2). When I think of a modern-day Paul, the name Saeed Abedini comes to mind. Some of you may have seen my posts on Facebook from time to time about this Christian pastor, originally from Iran, who had returned to his home country several times to visit family and to build an orphanage. Despite having the government’s permission to visit, Pastor Saeed was detained on his last trip, in 2012, while trying to return home. He has been in various prisons ever since, often beaten and deprived of medical care. In the midst of horrible conditions, he has been able to send letters out, letters that are full of faith and confidence in the God he loves even when the government is against him. And even though he is an American citizen, his own government has been reluctant to tie his release, as well as the release of other American prisoners, to any agreement with Iran…until this week. This past week, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution calling on the administration to not leave the prisoners behind in Iran as the final details of the nuclear agreement are being hammered out. It’s the first sign of pressure being put on the diplomats. And yet, no matter how all that turns out, Pastor Saeed has held his head high in prison, determined to pray and love and live a live of godliness and holiness even in the worst of situations. So can’t we also? We don’t live in such conditions. We live in freedom. We also ought to live in love toward all, not just those who love us back. We are called to be in the world, but not of it, extending love toward all. Love that does not dishonor others, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered, and keeps no record of wrongs. That kind of love will change not just our own country but the world. Let’s pray.

To Each Other

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8a; Ephesians 5:21-6:4

May 10, 2015 • Portage First UMC

VIDEO CLIP: Jeff Allen, “Troubles With Teenagers”

Ah, family—right? Family can be the very best thing in our life and the biggest challenge in our life—sometimes all in the same day! We pick our friends and we choose our church family, but our biological family or our adopted family—those we don’t choose. As Bishop Desmond Tutu said, “They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.” But, let’s be honest, sometimes family doesn’t always feel like a gift. Sometimes, when you’re not all getting along, or when you have teenagers in the house, or when there is a crisis evolving, family can seem like a challenge. When you think of “family,” what words or images come to mind?

Naturally, the word “love” comes into play when we talk about family, especially on a day like this one, a day dedicated in one way to mothers and in a bigger way, to families in general. Since we’re spending these weeks considering what it looks like to love one another in a variety of life situations, it only makes sense to spend today talking about what it looks like to experience real love (agape) in the midst of our families. And to do that, we’re going to go back to the passage we’ve been dwelling on for these weeks, Paul’s famous description of love in 1 Corinthians 13, verses 4-8. As I’ve reminded you, Paul wrote these words to a local church, trying to help them learn to love each other instead of spending their days in conflict and sin. But even though Paul didn’t have families specifically in mind when he wrote about love, these words certainly ought to define not only our church relationships but also those relationships that are closest to us, the ones related to us by blood. Those relationships deserve to find “a more excellent way” to live. So what does, or should, love look like in our families?

Some say that the future is not a promising one for the American family. Some futurists say with confidence that the day of the nuclear family—two parents, 2 1/2 kids and a white picket fence—is over. And yet, fully 76% of people surveyed say that family is the most important thing in their lives. One of the things that leads researchers to conclude is that the definition of what makes a “family” is changing or perhaps already has changed. Single-parent families are the fastest growing demographic in our own community, and that reflects a trend around the nation. There is also a rapidly rising trend toward multi-generational families—nearly 6% of all families have three or more generations living together under one roof, and that percentage has nearly doubled since 2000. Some researchers believe that is because there is still a deeply-rooted belief in the Biblical command to “honor your father and mother,” even if people don’t realize it’s a Biblical command. It’s become something rooted strongly in our heritage. More than 80% of Americans say they feel “very obligated” to help if their parents needed it, and around 77% feel obligated to help their grown children get through hard times. Some of you have experienced some or all of that yourselves, but all of these numbers and pictures really tell us one thing: families have undergone great change and great stress in these first fifteen years of the twenty-first century. And yet the command to love remains the same. So how do we do that when things are changing so rapidly?

Well, no matter the configuration of your family or who you understand to be part of your family, the Bible is pretty clear when it talks about caring for and honoring family. It’s not just a nice thing to do, and it’s not something we do out of obligation. Caring for and honoring our family is an act of worship, because it reflects God’s agape love for us. You remember, as I said last week, that the kind of love Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 13 is agape, which is the Greek word for unconditional, no-strings-attached, without-obligation love. I usually say it means “I love you just because you are.” In some ways, it’s the New Testament equivalent of a word you’ve heard me use before from the Old Testament—hesed, “when the one who owes you nothing gives you everything.” That’s the kind of love Paul is describing in this chapter, and it’s the kind of love that really can’t be understood or experienced outside of a relationship with Jesus. Now, as I said last week, we’re going to focus on just one verse this morning and then I invite you this week to think about and work out how the other verses in the passage we read apply to your families. So, on this Mother’s Day, to our families, Paul says this: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud” (13:4).

Those are five big words to think about. Love is patient; that word literally means “long-suffering,” and some of the translations even put it that way: “love suffers long.” Love is the mother who stays by the bedside of her sick daughter all night long. Love is the husband who is there for every cancer treatment, every doctor’s appointment, every night when the pain is just too much. Love is the parent who will do anything to find healing for their child. Love suffers long, and love is kind. The word Paul uses there means “gentle or benign,” and when I first thought about “benign” I was trying to make the connection to the translation of “kind.” Then I thought about those who have been through cancer treatments, or even the couple of occasions Cathy or I have had some odd tissue that the doctors wanted to “take a closer look at.” You wait and you wait and you wait and it’s with great relief that you hear the word “benign.” Rather than being some sort of passive or weak word, the word “benign” has great power and does, in fact, bring great kindness to your life. Paul is saying love does not invade harshly; love brings kindness.

So those are two things love “is” in this verse, and Paul matches these two with three things love “is not” or “does not” do. Love does not envy. The word there primarily means “zealous,” like you’re enthusiastic for something. There was a branch of Judaism in Jesus’ day that were called the “Zealots,” who believed in armed revolution against Rome. They were so passionate about freedom for their country that they would do anything and kill anyone to see it happen. That’s one (very destructive) form of enthusiasm, rooted in an envy of what someone else has (in their case, freedom). The early Methodists were called “enthusiasts” because they were zealous or passionate about their faith; others ridiculed them perhaps out of an envy for what they had. But what Paul is talking about is that sort of passion turned against someone else—a spiteful, envious attitude toward good things that have happened to someone else. Real love is not zealous toward evil thoughts; love does not envy, and it does not boast. One way we might understand this is that love is not self-centered; it’s not narcissistic. It’s not only concerned for its own well-being or its own success. A person who only focuses on themselves is not a loving person. Now, there are folks, and you’ve probably known some, who claim that what they do is for others, but it’s really about their own recognition and being noticed by others. Have you ever been talking with someone and all the while they are scanning the room, almost desperately looking for someone (anyone) they know? Those sort of folks usually will abandon your conversation when they see someone else and almost run to shake their hand. We expect that sort of behavior from politicians, but not from friends. People like that want to be noticed, to be seen. It feeds their ego and their need to be needed. Love does not boast; love is not centered only on itself. A positive way to say it might be, “Love is other-centered.”

And the third thing in this verse that love is not is proud. Some translations say “love is not puffed up,” which is a very literal translation of the word. The image, of course, is of a balloon into which you put air—hot air—to puff it up, make it bigger…and bigger…and bigger. And you know what happens when you keep puffing it up, blowing it up. Eventually it will break. Pride is like a whole lot of hot air. Have you known people who have an opinion on everything? Or they seem to love to talk just to hear themselves talk? Or folks who can’t imagine that they could possibly be wrong? We’ve all probably been “that person” from time to time, but there are folks who seem to be like that all the time, at least in public. I knew a guy once who liked to draw people into talking about controversial topics just so that he could tear them down and rip their arguments apart. There was no love in that. There was a sense that he just wanted to be right or feel as if he were right all the time. Love is not like that. Love is not proud; it is not puffed up.

Now, it’s not hard to see how these attributes of love can affect life in our families. “Love is patient,” and when we are not, tempers flare and words are spoken that we wouldn’t ordinarily say. So love takes the time to listen before reacting. Sometimes what we think we hear is not what we’re actually hearing. “Love is kind,” and when we’re not, conflict becomes the norm rather than the exception. And conflict, like a cancer, can destroy relationships. Love “does not envy,” and when we do, distrust grows. In a setting that was meant to be full of “security, affirmation and new energy,” we find ourselves wondering if the other person really does have our best interests in mind (cf. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, pg. 72). Love “does not boast,” and when we do, when we are excessively self-centered, we will tear apart the very fabric of relationships because we live and act as if we do not need anyone else. Those who are narcissistic find it very difficult to really love anyone else. And love “is not proud.” Does that mean we shouldn’t be proud of our accomplishments? No, that’s not what Paul is saying. Paul is warning against those times when we are proud at the expense of others, tearing others down so that we can be “the best.” That’s destructive pride; mutual pride is spurring our family on so that all are at their best. Love is never proud to the point of tearing others down.

And that’s just one verse, or five attributes, of love! Just thinking about those has probably brought to mind some events or actions that we might not be so proud of. How in the world can we get to that kind of love? Elsewhere in Paul’s writing, he gives some specific instructions of what a Christian family life might look like, and so for the remainder of our time this morning, I want to turn to Paul’s writing to the church in Ephesus. This passage, situated in chapters 5 and 6, has often been misunderstood, misinterpreted and taken out of context. It’s been used to demean women in particular and provide unhealthy family dynamics in general. Honestly, it’s given Paul a bad name as people have labeled him a woman-hater. But to read these verses that way is to miss what he’s saying, particularly what he is saying about the meaning of “submission.”

In the past, older Bibles put a paragraph break after verse 21, which made the average reader believe that verse belonged to the previous passage. So you’d begin the paragraph with, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands…” (5:21). And out of that flowed a whole lot of bad theology and bad preaching. This verse has been used to justify much poor treatment of wives, up to and even including physical abuse. I remember a church in Muncie that had a class on “how to make your wife submit.” I did not sign up for that class! It doesn’t help that the first century, out of which Paul wrote these words, didn’t treat women well either. Women were just above property. One rabbi advised it was better for men not to talk to any woman, not even their wives (cf. Snodgrass, NIV Application Commentary: Ephesians, pg. 302). And the history of the church’s teaching on and treatment of women has remained poor for much of our history. And it all has to do with that paragraph break. But, you see, in the original text, there is no such thing as a paragraph break. Nor are there verses or chapter numbers; those were all added later and are often less helpful than they should be. Verse 22 is not the start of Paul’s thought here; verse 21 is, and that verse sets the tone for everything else we read here. Paul sets this as his general theme: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (5:21). Submit to one another, he says, and then the rest of this passage is a description of what that looks like.

So what does it mean to “submit” to someone? The key here, I believe, is the context Paul sets. Family relationships only really make sense when Christ is involved, when the family members are focused on and loyal to him first. Our relationships are meant to be lived out “in reverence of Christ” and in an attitude of submission. That’s the context for all the individual instructions, which read sort of like a code of behavior for the home. Wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands, love your wives. Children, obey your parents. And fathers, don’t exasperate your children. That’s a lot, but they are all in the context of verse 21: submit to one another. And they are really all intertwined, because love doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It only happens as we share it with others. The word Paul uses that we translate as “submit” means “to place under,” or “to arrange,” to put in proper order or to influence. That’s a lot of meaning wrapped up in a single word, but again consider the worldview Paul is laying out here. “Submit to one another,” he says. Well, that doesn’t make any sense in our world of hierarchies and clear chains of command. If we’re submitting to each other, who’s really in charge? If we’re allowing the influence of the other into our lives, who’s making the decisions? Except decision-making and chain of command isn’t what Paul has in view here. When he talks about submitting to one another, he’s thinking of situations where each has the best interests of the other always in view. In other words, mutual submission means putting the other person—your spouse—first and being willing to place your own needs, desires and preferences in second place.

So, to wives, Paul says, “Submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord” (5:22). Remember that Paul lived and wrote to a culture where women were not valued, where even married women were considered “impure” because of their “regular bodily functions” (cf. Wright 67). They were seen as lesser beings. Paul is not, contrary to the way we normally hear it, demeaning women. In the church, women were finding a new freedom, a new value, that they had not experienced in the culture or in Judaism for that matter up to that time. So here, Paul is calling for a mutual submission, an agape love, self-abandoning love. He calls wives to submit or work with their husbands, not taking their freedom as a chance to break away from their husbands or to dismiss them in any way. And then he calls husbands to an even larger role. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (5:25). The “love” there is agape again, but the description of that kind of love is what we want to focus on. The kind of love husbands are to have for their wives is the kind Christ had for the church. And how did Christ love the church? He gave his life for the church. He died to save the church. Paul says that’s the kind of love husbands are to have for their wives, the kind of love that would die for the other person, the kind of love Jesus was talking about when he said, “Greater love [that word agape again] has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). The husband takes Jesus as his role model, so that bullying and arrogance are not an option. If self-sacrifice is not the model for a marriage, then the whole thing collapses, and many of us have seen that or experienced that (cf. Wright 66-67). But when a husband takes Jesus as his role model, when he lives toward his wife the way Jesus lives toward the church, she will respond with the same. That’s the picture of mutual submission, a picture that gives all persons equal value (cf. Snodgrass 305).

Cathy and I will soon be celebrating our 26th wedding anniversary, and I’d like to tell you it’s been smooth sailing all the way. Hearts and roses for twenty-six straight years. But I’d be lying, and everyone here who has been married any length of time knows that. There have been times in our marriage where we’ve gotten off track, where one or the both of us have begun to put our own agendas ahead of the other, where we have demanded our own “rights” rather than seeking the best for each other. Truth be told, I’m more guilty of that than she is; I’ve said repeatedly she is better than I deserve. For us, the biggest challenge happened around our tenth anniversary. Ten years together, and we really weren’t sure how to move forward. Christopher was four, I had been through heart surgery, and we were both finding challenging pieces in our careers. And when we became focused on those other things, it became easy to draw apart from each other, to begin to demand and expect our own way. There were times when I think we both thought it would have been easier to just give up. I’ve talked to many others throughout my years of ministry and I’m convinced we weren’t unique. Many, many couples report challenges around the tenth year. But, for Cathy and I, giving up wasn’t an option. I remember the very conversation that was a turning point. We were driving home from Merrillville (living in Jasper County at the time) and I don’t even know what we were talking about, but it suddenly hit both of us how we had been treating the other. Words had been spoken that were hurtful and, more than that, things had been done that could have been damaging to the relationship. In that car ride home, we both sought and received forgiveness from the other and began to work again at mutual submission. And it still hasn’t always been “smooth sailing” from that moment on; it’s hard work, but it’s worth every moment.

Wives, allow your husband to influence your lives. Husbands, be willing to lay down your lives for your wives. And then Paul addresses children: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (6:1). I’ve pulled this verse out a time or two; not that it does any good, but I quote it from time to time to both Christopher and Rachel! And Paul backs up this instruction with a reference to the Old Testament; in fact, he goes back to Israel’s foundational document, the Ten Commandments. It’s God’s original “top ten list,” and one of the “big ten” is to honor your parents, your father and mother (cf. Exodus 20:12). This has nothing to do with whether we consider them “worthy” or not. There are no conditions given, just a command to honor, a command that is repeated five times in the New Testament. So it’s also not just for the “way back then” or just for the Jewish people or even just for the Ephesians. Honoring parents was an essential foundation for the covenant between God and his people—us. Honoring parents is second only to honoring God himself. It’s vital to peace, harmony and security in the community (Snodgrass 321-326).

What does “honor” look like? The word translated as “obey” can also mean “give ear to, listen to.” So when children are young, it probably looks pretty much like doing what you are told by your parents. As children grow, as we become adults ourselves, that call to honor doesn’t stop, but it changes. It becomes more along the lines of seeking out and seriously considering what your parents say. And those for whom Mother’s Day or Father’s Day are difficult days, those who have lost one or both of their parents, know what it’s like to lose that input. I’ve heard several folks say they wish they could go back and ask mom or dad one more time what they think about this event or that. We take our parents’ input for granted, and sometimes in an effort to “find ourselves” we spurn that input, and yet parents, Paul is saying, have life experience we don’t have. As we grow, it’s not a matter of doing whatever they say; it’s a matter of honoring their life, honoring their input, giving an ear to what they have to say. We parents are often smarter than our children think we are!

Several years ago, a Dutch magazine published this description of the way a child responds to and interacts with his or her father, and mothers are subject to the same ages and stages. The description went this way: “At age 4, the child says, ‘My daddy can do anything.’ At age 7, ‘My daddy knows a lot. A whole lot.’ At age 8 he says, ‘Well my father doesn’t quite know everything.’ At 12 he says, ‘Naturally, my father doesn't know that either.’ At 14, ‘My dad is so hopelessly old-fashioned.’ Age 21: ‘That man is so out of date.’ At 25 years, ‘Dad knows a little, but not too much.’ At 30 years, ‘I must find out what Dad thinks about this.’ At 35 years, ‘Before we decide, let's get Dad’s idea first.’ At 50: ‘What would Dad have thought about that?’ At 60 years: ‘My Dad knew literally everything.’ At 65 years he says, ‘I wish I could talk it over with Dad one more time’” (http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/a-new-beginning/read/articles/what-dads-leave-behind-8460.html). I know my parents got a whole lot smarter after we were married and especially when we had our first child!

So wives giving respect to their husbands, husbands loving their wives, children obeying their parents, but then there is one more piece, and it’s specifically addressed to fathers. Fathers, who, in the Roman Empire, had absolute power of life and death over their children. Fathers, who would decide when a child was born whether the child would live or be left out to die of exposure. Fathers, who were responsible for the education of their sons after age seven (daughters were often just trained in household duties). Today Paul would probably address his remarks to both parents, but in his setting, he’s especially targeting the cultural role of fathers. In an age when they had so much familial power, Paul urges fathers to have a Christ-like attitude toward their children. “Fathers,” he says, “do not exasperate your children” (6:4). Don’t make them angry or provoke them to irritation. Don’t make them bitter or cause them to rebel. In other words, a parent’s behavior toward their children should be such that it points the children toward Jesus. “Bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord,” Paul says (6:4). Point your children toward Jesus; it’s our responsibility as parents to help our children know him. So we bring them to church and we take them to Bible School and Sunday School and youth group and we demonstrate with our own lives the priority faith has. Now, we’ll never know, really, if we have succeeded or not, but I’ve had glimpses along the way. Such as one Sunday after church, when we were home preparing lunch and Christopher (who was about 5 or 6 at the time) was at the table, breaking bread into small pieces. I asked him what he was doing, he held up a piece of bread and said, “This is the body of Christ, given for you.” Or when I see Rachel encouraging the person whom others leave out because they’re a bit different, loving people the way Jesus loves them, I get a glimpse. But only a glimpse, because ultimately I have to entrust my children to Christ and hope and pray they will live the best ways they have seen Cathy and I live (and that they’ll forget the times we fail).

This is what agape looks like in the family: patient, kind, not envious, not boasting, not proud. Wives giving respect, husbands loving, children honoring and fathers (and mothers) instructing, all of us living in mutual submission to each other and, most importantly, to Jesus Christ. And what does that look like in your life? You probably already know. That little nagging feeling you’re getting this morning at the back of your brain? That’s the Holy Spirit pushing and prodding you. There’s something you need to do this week to make your family relationship better, more loving, more like agape. So what is one step you will take, one thing you will do to live agape among your family members this week? Maybe you need to speak a word or write a letter of apology for that thing you didn’t intend to be hurtful but was nonetheless. Or maybe it’s time for a dinner out—a nice dinner out—where you can talk through the issues that are threatening the relationship. Find some quiet space and work it through from start to finish. Or perhaps you’ve been working long hours and you owe your family that vacation they’ve been hinting at. You need time together. Some of our family’s most memorable moments have happened when we’ve been away from all the distractions that our normal routine brings and we’ve been able to just spend time together. Take that vacation, that trip that you’ve been planning to take and honor one another by planning it together. Or maybe the next time there is a disagreement between you and your spouse, or you and your child, your act of agape is to take a step back and not say that harsh thing you usually say or that you really want to say. You know the one, the thing that will put him or her in their place and end the argument? You realize, don’t you, that it doesn’t really end the argument. It just pushes it off until another time when it will flare up with even greater intensity. Take a step back and don’t say that thing; instead, show agape and listen. Or, perhaps, an act of agape and honor would be including the others in your family in the decision-making. Some of us (mostly men, but sometimes women as well) are really good at making decisions without consulting anyone else, even those the decision will affect. What a powerful way to show honor and respect by sorting through the issues and making the decision together. Or perhaps it’s something else in your situation. The question that Paul confronts us with today is this: what is it you need to do, actively do, to live out agape among those you love the most?

Honor. Submit. Respect. Words we would do well to add to our permanent vocabulary, and more than that, add to our permanent, daily actions, our way of living. After all, love is patient and kind. Love is not envious or boastful or proud. Love seeks the best for the other person, and we desperately need to show agape to the others in our families. Submit to one another, then, out of reverence for Christ. Let’s pray.