February 23, 2025 • 20 mins
The episode delves into the challenging teachings of Jesus from the Sermon on the Plain, highlighting the complexities of loving one's enemies and the struggle between instinctual responses and the call to resilience through love. It explores the nature of true power and encourages trust in the divine teachings to foster humility and authentic relationships.
• Reflecting on the Walk to Emmaus experience
• Exploring the essence of the Sermon on the Plain
• Jesus’ call to love the unlovable and its challenges
• Examining fears around vulnerability and power dynamics
• Humorously discussing cultural references to power in relationships
• Addressing concerns over Christian nationalism and authority
• Distinguishing between mandated love and lived experience
• Understanding temporary versus divine power
• Encouraging trust in Jesus’ teachings for a better life
• Highlighting humility as a path to grace and understanding
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Pastor Darren (00:00):
I have spent the last couple of days over at a
Walk to Emmaus.
Do we have any Walk to Emmauscrew here?
It's kind of a Christianrevival movement.
Yeah, me and Leroy, any others?
Oh okay, Candy's walked toEmmaus.
(00:20):
All right, there's a few of youout there, all right, decaloris
.
So anyway, I'm a little tired,not a lot tired, but a little
bit tired.
Good experience, though I'mappreciative of my friend Boyd
who got me connected to all ofit.
But I start the journey here.
I'll recontinue our journeyhere.
(00:41):
We've been talking about thisbetter life that our vision
statement has been talking aboutSetting a course to a better
life.
Who and where do we want to be?
And we switched a couple weeksback to the front part of the
mission statement Setting course.
(01:03):
What are we doing to get to theplace where we want to be?
And we continue here in Luke.
This is the Sermon on the Plain.
If you remember, last week, wehave Sermon on the Mount,
Matthew, where he's on themountain and he's preaching down
, coming from God, messagedelivered from on high, whereas
(01:24):
Luke's version he's on the plane.
He's, even with those that heis preaching to, trying to make
those connections.
And so, as we continue thatjourney through this summary of
what Jesus was really trying toteach about how we're supposed
to live, how we're supposed tobehave.
I have to confess, in my journeythis week, I landed in a
(01:49):
different spot than I thought Iwas going to land.
I got hung up on the verybeginning of the passage.
Do you remember what it saidright at the very beginning?
But I say to you that listen.
But I say to you that listen,isn't that an interesting way to
(02:14):
start?
Because to me it sounds justmaybe a little bit cynical.
Right, I say to you that listen, whatever percentage of you
that are actually hearing whatI'm saying, this is who I'm
talking to at this point.
You know to me, in some ways,it makes sense if you know the
(02:35):
message that he's delivering atthis time.
It is a difficult lesson, theseare difficult things to be
asking of human beings, and sowe shouldn't maybe be fully
surprised.
I think, if the passage was adialogue instead of a monologue,
every other verse would be thephrase yeah, but Right, listen
(02:57):
to this, are you ready?
But I say to you that listen,right, listen to this, are you
ready?
But I say to you that listen,love your enemies, do good to
those who hate you yeah, butBless those who curse you.
Pray for those who abuse youyeah, but If anyone strikes you
(03:25):
on the cheek, offer the otheralso.
Oh, yeah, but from anyone whotakes away your coat, do not
withhold even your shirt.
Yeah, but give to everyone whobegs from you.
And if anyone takes away yourgoods, do not ask for them again
(03:48):
.
Yeah, but do to others as youwould have them do to you.
Can we say it together?
Yeah, but these are rough,these are big asks, these are
hard to do.
I might even argue that they arecounter-instinctual to our very
(04:11):
being to do these things thatJesus is asking us to do,
instructing us to do.
They go against what we'renaturally inclined to do.
If someone hits you in the face, you don't go.
How about this one?
That's just not what our beingsare given to do, right?
(04:32):
If we say to love those whohate us, it feels like we're
condoning that, we're enablingthat.
To love those who hate us, tobless those who curse us, to
pray for those who abuse us, itfeels like we're saying it's
okay to keep doing that to us,even if we aren't saying it to
(04:55):
convince ourselves.
We feel like we're leaving thedoor open for the other person
to continue to do that.
Give them the other cheek.
Well, why not my house and mycar as well?
Thank you for hitting me.
Here's all my stuff.
Right.
Then, luke, he's got to pile oneven further.
(05:18):
If you love those who love you,what credit is that to you?
Well, it's easy to love theones who love you, is it not?
Usually?
For even sinners love those wholove them.
If you do good to those who dogood to you, what credit is that
(05:38):
to you?
Again, that's easy.
That's American economics rightthere.
They did good to you.
You do good back.
Even sinners do that.
So Jesus doesn't lighten up onit in any way.
I think there's a genuine fearin play here, a fear of opening
(06:03):
the door to further damage,further hurt.
But I also think there's apower dynamic that's in play
there.
Why we wrestle with it?
Maybe all it is is this powerto keep them from doing it again
.
Still, it's a power thing.
(06:25):
Nonetheless, we can't afford togive ground here.
It makes us vulnerable.
It's a power we want to havehand.
Do you remember the Seinfeldepisode To have hand?
Oh, you don't watch Seinfeld.
How do you go to sleep at night.
(06:49):
That's the last thing I'mwatching every night with
seinfeld, george costanza.
He's the neurotic friend youknow that's in a lot of these
sitcoms, right, and?
And he's attributing all of hislack of successful
relationships.
And you know all of this.
Not being able to keep apartner is because he doesn't
have power.
He doesn't have hand.
(07:11):
He needs hand.
It's about power.
In many ways, I wanted to thinkabout this power just a little
bit.
Anybody watching hockey onThursday night?
Yeah, okay, good, we've got afew of us.
A few of us were watchinghockey.
(07:31):
It was the big.
Instead of the National HockeyLeague All-Star Game, they did a
14-tournament, country againstcountry.
The countries who had the mostplayers in the NHL played
against each other, and sureenough, because Canada and the
US tend to have the most players, it came down to Thursday night
(07:54):
best against best, usa versusCanada.
Are you ready for my confession?
Canada, are you ready for myconfession?
(08:18):
I was rooting for Canada.
All right, I'm not alone.
Those Canadians are good people.
They're nice folk up there.
Am I right?
Those Canadians you meet goodpeople?
I married a Canadian, aCanadian who didn't know the
game was on.
Mind you Right?
Isn't Nancy Bonds like thenicest person you've ever met.
(08:39):
Right, she's a true Canadianand Tim's kind of honorary
Canadian, am I right?
He's like super nice.
I'm a pastor, I'm supposed tobe nice, but you're paying me to
be nice.
He just does it because he's agood guy, right?
(09:00):
Canada I'm going to root forCanada here.
That know, that was a littlebit what was going on.
But also in my head I'm likethere's some nationalism going
on in our country.
That gets me a little bitconcerned, a little anxious.
Do we really need another thingto be overconfident about?
(09:20):
I don't know.
Sometimes, my Christian brothersand sisters, you know we're
wanting to assert our Christianauthority over society and I get
nervous about that.
It feels problematic to me.
Right, could we mandateChristian love?
God didn't mandate Christianlove.
(09:42):
God didn't mandate Christianlove.
God sent Jesus down and triedto persuade, convince, to show
what it looked like.
That's how God worked.
Even God really didn't try tomandate it.
I'm not even sure we would allagree all us, the body of faith,
(10:03):
would we agree on whatChristian love is and what it
looks like.
It's rough.
So when we start trying toassert ourselves into that
conversation and mandate it all,it feels like it's a
problematic power at its best.
I don't know that we want to bein a position where we are
(10:24):
deciding how others are going tophilosophize, theologize their
lives.
I think we're in the convincingbusiness.
We're in the heart business.
They're going to decide becauseof how we treat them, not
because we've mandated it,mandated it.
But you can see how this powerthing kind of plays out, maybe a
(10:48):
little bit.
It plays out in the scripture,obviously, when we look at the
things that Jesus is instructingus to do.
If we were to take the oppositeright, it would be giving hate
for hate, curse for curse.
With those who hate us, we'regoing to hate them even more and
(11:10):
we get into this dynamic.
I'm going to presume thatenough hate is going to lead to
some actions that live out thathate and then there's probably
likely some end to that, even avictor of some sort that wins
this whole dynamic.
(11:32):
Do we have any rap fans in theroom today?
I'm guessing.
All right, steve, all right?
Did Kendrick win?
I think he won prettyconvincingly.
Kendrick and Drake this is thebig rap battle of the last
decade.
I think it's been going on along time.
When you get to be in the SuperBowl halftime show and you have
(11:54):
done all of your shots at theother guy in front of the world.
He won.
He wins the war.
Drake ought to just quit andmove on.
Look how relevant I am.
Is it relevant when there areonly two other people who even
(12:15):
know who I'm talking about?
I guess relevant is relative,in other words, but yeah, maybe
we even get to the point wheresomebody actually won the battle
, maybe you won the battle.
Now you get to assert yourself,your will, your view.
(12:36):
But what's the nature of thatpower?
It would be hard to call itpermanent, right, it's not
really a permanent power.
You didn't come to some sharedagreement about how the future
was going to lay out.
You just got the other personor people to step back.
(12:56):
The power would last,presumably until it was gone,
until you didn't win, or maybesomebody else wins and won over
the power.
In any case, it's just atemporary power that you were
able to amass, certainly not adivine power, right?
(13:23):
Not anything that was sacred,steeped in the eternal,
something that makes thingsbetter.
See, I think Jesus, he's tryingto invite us with this
invitation, this instructionthat feels so difficult, feels
so counterintuitive.
He's trying to get us into thisnew realm of understanding how
(13:47):
the world works and I want toreiterate, how this world works,
not some other world.
God wanted to build the kingdomhere and in this there is a
deeper power.
Not just a power that allows usto feel like we won, feel like
(14:08):
we were right, feel like we werethe truth.
It's actually a real power thatcomes with healing, that comes
with growth, that comes with thecapacity to allow everyone to
bloom into the creature that Godwants each and every one of us
to be from our very birth, thatGod wanted us to be.
(14:31):
It's not a power thatoverpowers or conquers.
It's a power that wins over,that builds bridges, that leads
to healing.
It's not an absolute power thatovercomes everybody and
mandates everything.
Fall in line, you turn thatother cheek.
(14:53):
There is no guarantee youaren't going to get hit again.
Not everybody is open to thisdifferent realm that Jesus is
inviting us to, but by doing so,in some ways, we've shed a
different light, a new way ofdoing things, onto the situation
(15:15):
, onto the conflict.
The hope is that something intheir heart, something that God
put in their heart, might openup a little bit awaken, just a
little bit Awaken, just a littlebit, but I'm not going to
linger there.
I sat there thinking, oh, we'vebeen preaching this sermon
(15:36):
because it is so difficult for2,000 years.
You've probably heard thissermon many, many times.
We've been wrestling with itfor forever.
Maybe the real question for usis are we going to trust it?
Are we going to trust thisteaching that Jesus gives to us,
(16:00):
this teaching that also appearsin Matthew?
This teaching we're prettyconvinced was a core message
that Jesus brought?
Are we going to trust it?
I told you I was at the walk toEmmaus.
It's kind of a faithrevitalization weekend kind of
(16:22):
thing.
It's been really powerful for alot of people in this world and
I was doing the talk onobstacles to grace, things that
get in the way of usunderstanding and believing and
living out God's unconditionallove for us.
And as I got to the end, Iended up asking this very same
(16:45):
question.
We know that Jesus describesand models for us a new way of
living life.
Are you going to trust it?
Are you going to trust that itleads to something better?
Are you going to trust that itleads to an enriching of your
relationships?
Are you going to trust thatit's going to build the body of
(17:09):
faith in this world.
Are you going to trust thatit's something that enables
others to fully bloom Bloom intobeing able to offer all that
God is hoping they will offer tothis world?
Maybe Luke has it right here,opening with Jesus saying to
(17:31):
those who will listen, becausethat group that he's preaching
to it often doesn't include us.
We don't always believe in thisfully, this new way of living,
of looking at the world.
We make other choices, we don'talways trust, we don't always
(17:58):
listen.
But it's in that, the humility,the humility it takes to do
what he's teaching here, that wecome to find God's fullness in
ourselves.
God's abundance in ourselvescomes as we are able to live out
(18:19):
that sacrificial love forothers.
When we can redirect ourselvesto that sacrificial relationship
that Jesus modeled, we get ataste of what Jesus knows to be
very, very true about life.
We get to know the part of lifethat is sacred, that is divine,
(18:41):
that is full of life'sabundance.
God calls us to this humility,not that we might defer to the
world, but that we mightunderstand the beauty that comes
and the strength that comesfrom that humility.
(19:03):
Now I can tell you thatsometimes life does humble us.
Sometimes life takes us wherewe really don't want to go, and
my guess is, all of you have astory about being in that space,
Life leading you to difficulty,to challenge, to questions with
(19:29):
no answer.
Sometimes life does that foryou.
To me, the irony of that is itcan be a gift in the way it
humbles us, in the way it opensus to a new way of understanding
the world, a new way ofunderstanding its challenges,
its pains.
(19:49):
It's a counterintuitive gift ofsorts we don't ask for this
gift for sure but it can haveits value.
This is a way that God oftenworks through us.
You guys are going to receive agift this morning.
You guys are going to receive agift this morning.
(20:09):
Lois Jackson has walked thejourney with this church for a
long time.
We haven't seen her in a bit,but she has a gift from God that
she shares her music and she'sgoing to be singing a song that
I think lives into that reality,a song about how, when life can
(20:29):
bring a lot of hurt, a lot ofpain, it also can bring an
awareness of God and awarenessof God's love, and I invite you
to listen for that messageShe'll be singing during our
offertory, during our offertory.
(20:49):
So, with that, I'll invite youto prepare yourself for that and
say Amen, amen.
I have spent the last couple of days over at a
Walk to Emmaus.
Do we have any Walk to Emmauscrew here?
It's kind of a Christianrevival movement.
Yeah, me and Leroy, any others?
Oh okay, Candy's walked toEmmaus.
(00:20):
All right, there's a few of youout there, all right, decaloris
.
So anyway, I'm a little tired,not a lot tired, but a little
bit tired.
Good experience, though I'mappreciative of my friend Boyd
who got me connected to all ofit.
But I start the journey here.
I'll recontinue our journeyhere.
(00:41):
We've been talking about thisbetter life that our vision
statement has been talking aboutSetting a course to a better
life.
Who and where do we want to be?
And we switched a couple weeksback to the front part of the
mission statement Setting course.
(01:03):
What are we doing to get to theplace where we want to be?
And we continue here in Luke.
This is the Sermon on the Plain.
If you remember, last week, wehave Sermon on the Mount,
Matthew, where he's on themountain and he's preaching down
, coming from God, messagedelivered from on high, whereas
(01:24):
Luke's version he's on the plane.
He's, even with those that heis preaching to, trying to make
those connections.
And so, as we continue thatjourney through this summary of
what Jesus was really trying toteach about how we're supposed
to live, how we're supposed tobehave.
I have to confess, in my journeythis week, I landed in a
(01:49):
different spot than I thought Iwas going to land.
I got hung up on the verybeginning of the passage.
Do you remember what it saidright at the very beginning?
But I say to you that listen.
But I say to you that listen,isn't that an interesting way to
(02:14):
start?
Because to me it sounds justmaybe a little bit cynical.
Right, I say to you that listen, whatever percentage of you
that are actually hearing whatI'm saying, this is who I'm
talking to at this point.
You know to me, in some ways,it makes sense if you know the
(02:35):
message that he's delivering atthis time.
It is a difficult lesson, theseare difficult things to be
asking of human beings, and sowe shouldn't maybe be fully
surprised.
I think, if the passage was adialogue instead of a monologue,
every other verse would be thephrase yeah, but Right, listen
(02:57):
to this, are you ready?
But I say to you that listen,right, listen to this, are you
ready?
But I say to you that listen,love your enemies, do good to
those who hate you yeah, butBless those who curse you.
Pray for those who abuse youyeah, but If anyone strikes you
(03:25):
on the cheek, offer the otheralso.
Oh, yeah, but from anyone whotakes away your coat, do not
withhold even your shirt.
Yeah, but give to everyone whobegs from you.
And if anyone takes away yourgoods, do not ask for them again
(03:48):
.
Yeah, but do to others as youwould have them do to you.
Can we say it together?
Yeah, but these are rough,these are big asks, these are
hard to do.
I might even argue that they arecounter-instinctual to our very
(04:11):
being to do these things thatJesus is asking us to do,
instructing us to do.
They go against what we'renaturally inclined to do.
If someone hits you in the face, you don't go.
How about this one?
That's just not what our beingsare given to do, right?
(04:32):
If we say to love those whohate us, it feels like we're
condoning that, we're enablingthat.
To love those who hate us, tobless those who curse us, to
pray for those who abuse us, itfeels like we're saying it's
okay to keep doing that to us,even if we aren't saying it to
(04:55):
convince ourselves.
We feel like we're leaving thedoor open for the other person
to continue to do that.
Give them the other cheek.
Well, why not my house and mycar as well?
Thank you for hitting me.
Here's all my stuff.
Right.
Then, luke, he's got to pile oneven further.
(05:18):
If you love those who love you,what credit is that to you?
Well, it's easy to love theones who love you, is it not?
Usually?
For even sinners love those wholove them.
If you do good to those who dogood to you, what credit is that
(05:38):
to you?
Again, that's easy.
That's American economics rightthere.
They did good to you.
You do good back.
Even sinners do that.
So Jesus doesn't lighten up onit in any way.
I think there's a genuine fearin play here, a fear of opening
(06:03):
the door to further damage,further hurt.
But I also think there's apower dynamic that's in play
there.
Why we wrestle with it?
Maybe all it is is this powerto keep them from doing it again
.
Still, it's a power thing.
(06:25):
Nonetheless, we can't afford togive ground here.
It makes us vulnerable.
It's a power we want to havehand.
Do you remember the Seinfeldepisode To have hand?
Oh, you don't watch Seinfeld.
How do you go to sleep at night.
(06:49):
That's the last thing I'mwatching every night with
seinfeld, george costanza.
He's the neurotic friend youknow that's in a lot of these
sitcoms, right, and?
And he's attributing all of hislack of successful
relationships.
And you know all of this.
Not being able to keep apartner is because he doesn't
have power.
He doesn't have hand.
(07:11):
He needs hand.
It's about power.
In many ways, I wanted to thinkabout this power just a little
bit.
Anybody watching hockey onThursday night?
Yeah, okay, good, we've got afew of us.
A few of us were watchinghockey.
(07:31):
It was the big.
Instead of the National HockeyLeague All-Star Game, they did a
14-tournament, country againstcountry.
The countries who had the mostplayers in the NHL played
against each other, and sureenough, because Canada and the
US tend to have the most players, it came down to Thursday night
(07:54):
best against best, usa versusCanada.
Are you ready for my confession?
Canada, are you ready for myconfession?
(08:18):
I was rooting for Canada.
All right, I'm not alone.
Those Canadians are good people.
They're nice folk up there.
Am I right?
Those Canadians you meet goodpeople?
I married a Canadian, aCanadian who didn't know the
game was on.
Mind you Right?
Isn't Nancy Bonds like thenicest person you've ever met.
(08:39):
Right, she's a true Canadianand Tim's kind of honorary
Canadian, am I right?
He's like super nice.
I'm a pastor, I'm supposed tobe nice, but you're paying me to
be nice.
He just does it because he's agood guy, right?
(09:00):
Canada I'm going to root forCanada here.
That know, that was a littlebit what was going on.
But also in my head I'm likethere's some nationalism going
on in our country.
That gets me a little bitconcerned, a little anxious.
Do we really need another thingto be overconfident about?
(09:20):
I don't know.
Sometimes, my Christian brothersand sisters, you know we're
wanting to assert our Christianauthority over society and I get
nervous about that.
It feels problematic to me.
Right, could we mandateChristian love?
God didn't mandate Christianlove.
(09:42):
God didn't mandate Christianlove.
God sent Jesus down and triedto persuade, convince, to show
what it looked like.
That's how God worked.
Even God really didn't try tomandate it.
I'm not even sure we would allagree all us, the body of faith,
(10:03):
would we agree on whatChristian love is and what it
looks like.
It's rough.
So when we start trying toassert ourselves into that
conversation and mandate it all,it feels like it's a
problematic power at its best.
I don't know that we want to bein a position where we are
(10:24):
deciding how others are going tophilosophize, theologize their
lives.
I think we're in the convincingbusiness.
We're in the heart business.
They're going to decide becauseof how we treat them, not
because we've mandated it,mandated it.
But you can see how this powerthing kind of plays out, maybe a
(10:48):
little bit.
It plays out in the scripture,obviously, when we look at the
things that Jesus is instructingus to do.
If we were to take the oppositeright, it would be giving hate
for hate, curse for curse.
With those who hate us, we'regoing to hate them even more and
(11:10):
we get into this dynamic.
I'm going to presume thatenough hate is going to lead to
some actions that live out thathate and then there's probably
likely some end to that, even avictor of some sort that wins
this whole dynamic.
(11:32):
Do we have any rap fans in theroom today?
I'm guessing.
All right, steve, all right?
Did Kendrick win?
I think he won prettyconvincingly.
Kendrick and Drake this is thebig rap battle of the last
decade.
I think it's been going on along time.
When you get to be in the SuperBowl halftime show and you have
(11:54):
done all of your shots at theother guy in front of the world.
He won.
He wins the war.
Drake ought to just quit andmove on.
Look how relevant I am.
Is it relevant when there areonly two other people who even
(12:15):
know who I'm talking about?
I guess relevant is relative,in other words, but yeah, maybe
we even get to the point wheresomebody actually won the battle
, maybe you won the battle.
Now you get to assert yourself,your will, your view.
(12:36):
But what's the nature of thatpower?
It would be hard to call itpermanent, right, it's not
really a permanent power.
You didn't come to some sharedagreement about how the future
was going to lay out.
You just got the other personor people to step back.
(12:56):
The power would last,presumably until it was gone,
until you didn't win, or maybesomebody else wins and won over
the power.
In any case, it's just atemporary power that you were
able to amass, certainly not adivine power, right?
(13:23):
Not anything that was sacred,steeped in the eternal,
something that makes thingsbetter.
See, I think Jesus, he's tryingto invite us with this
invitation, this instructionthat feels so difficult, feels
so counterintuitive.
He's trying to get us into thisnew realm of understanding how
(13:47):
the world works and I want toreiterate, how this world works,
not some other world.
God wanted to build the kingdomhere and in this there is a
deeper power.
Not just a power that allows usto feel like we won, feel like
(14:08):
we were right, feel like we werethe truth.
It's actually a real power thatcomes with healing, that comes
with growth, that comes with thecapacity to allow everyone to
bloom into the creature that Godwants each and every one of us
to be from our very birth, thatGod wanted us to be.
(14:31):
It's not a power thatoverpowers or conquers.
It's a power that wins over,that builds bridges, that leads
to healing.
It's not an absolute power thatovercomes everybody and
mandates everything.
Fall in line, you turn thatother cheek.
(14:53):
There is no guarantee youaren't going to get hit again.
Not everybody is open to thisdifferent realm that Jesus is
inviting us to, but by doing so,in some ways, we've shed a
different light, a new way ofdoing things, onto the situation
(15:15):
, onto the conflict.
The hope is that something intheir heart, something that God
put in their heart, might openup a little bit awaken, just a
little bit Awaken, just a littlebit, but I'm not going to
linger there.
I sat there thinking, oh, we'vebeen preaching this sermon
(15:36):
because it is so difficult for2,000 years.
You've probably heard thissermon many, many times.
We've been wrestling with itfor forever.
Maybe the real question for usis are we going to trust it?
Are we going to trust thisteaching that Jesus gives to us,
(16:00):
this teaching that also appearsin Matthew?
This teaching we're prettyconvinced was a core message
that Jesus brought?
Are we going to trust it?
I told you I was at the walk toEmmaus.
It's kind of a faithrevitalization weekend kind of
(16:22):
thing.
It's been really powerful for alot of people in this world and
I was doing the talk onobstacles to grace, things that
get in the way of usunderstanding and believing and
living out God's unconditionallove for us.
And as I got to the end, Iended up asking this very same
(16:45):
question.
We know that Jesus describesand models for us a new way of
living life.
Are you going to trust it?
Are you going to trust that itleads to something better?
Are you going to trust that itleads to an enriching of your
relationships?
Are you going to trust thatit's going to build the body of
(17:09):
faith in this world.
Are you going to trust thatit's something that enables
others to fully bloom Bloom intobeing able to offer all that
God is hoping they will offer tothis world?
Maybe Luke has it right here,opening with Jesus saying to
(17:31):
those who will listen, becausethat group that he's preaching
to it often doesn't include us.
We don't always believe in thisfully, this new way of living,
of looking at the world.
We make other choices, we don'talways trust, we don't always
(17:58):
listen.
But it's in that, the humility,the humility it takes to do
what he's teaching here, that wecome to find God's fullness in
ourselves.
God's abundance in ourselvescomes as we are able to live out
(18:19):
that sacrificial love forothers.
When we can redirect ourselvesto that sacrificial relationship
that Jesus modeled, we get ataste of what Jesus knows to be
very, very true about life.
We get to know the part of lifethat is sacred, that is divine,
(18:41):
that is full of life'sabundance.
God calls us to this humility,not that we might defer to the
world, but that we mightunderstand the beauty that comes
and the strength that comesfrom that humility.
(19:03):
Now I can tell you thatsometimes life does humble us.
Sometimes life takes us wherewe really don't want to go, and
my guess is, all of you have astory about being in that space,
Life leading you to difficulty,to challenge, to questions with
(19:29):
no answer.
Sometimes life does that foryou.
To me, the irony of that is itcan be a gift in the way it
humbles us, in the way it opensus to a new way of understanding
the world, a new way ofunderstanding its challenges,
its pains.
(19:49):
It's a counterintuitive gift ofsorts we don't ask for this
gift for sure but it can haveits value.
This is a way that God oftenworks through us.
You guys are going to receive agift this morning.
You guys are going to receive agift this morning.
(20:09):
Lois Jackson has walked thejourney with this church for a
long time.
We haven't seen her in a bit,but she has a gift from God that
she shares her music and she'sgoing to be singing a song that
I think lives into that reality,a song about how, when life can
(20:29):
bring a lot of hurt, a lot ofpain, it also can bring an
awareness of God and awarenessof God's love, and I invite you
to listen for that messageShe'll be singing during our
offertory, during our offertory.
(20:49):
So, with that, I'll invite youto prepare yourself for that and
say Amen, amen.
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