More, Bigger, Better

Summary

In a world often marked by division and unrest, hope can be found in the timeless teachings of Jesus, which offer a blueprint for nurturing love, unity, and spiritual growth. The key to navigating life’s chaos lies in embracing love for God and our neighbors. Embrace the Spirit, prioritize love for God and for neighbor, and embrace a heavenly way of living. 

Transcript

Well, good morning everyone, and happy Father’s Day to you all. My name is Jonathan and it is a joy to be together today. And I just want to say to all of our father figures out there for all the men out there, thank you for what you do in the life of your family. Thank you for what you do to add joy and beauty to this community. Thank you for being a part of what is going on here today.

Father’s Day like Mother’s Day or any other celebration can be both joy and sadness, I have that present in my life. It’s a day of great joy, but also in many ways, a difficult day. And so, regardless, today, if you are all joy, or if you are all sad or if you are somewhere in between, we say here at Journey that the importance is not being one or the other but bringing what we have chaos and offering it in a sense of worship to God, but also to be present with one another in this community.

And regardless of where we come from and what’s going on in our lives, it is a delight and a privilege to be able to gather together. And I want to also say to everyone, welcome, whether this is your first time or your hundredth time. We are so thankful for your presence. You being here today for everybody is a gift that you have given to this community. And so whether you’re here in person or with us online. I know a few texted in and said they were going to be gathering online today. And we are thankful for it all. I don’t know if you all have been paying attention to current events of our day, but there is an awful lot swirling around us. I suppose always there is an awful lot.

But today it seems like there is so much that is going on. There are wars around the world that seem to all be intensifying. There are natural disasters around the world that continue to pop up. Here closer to home we had a day yesterday full of protests and parades. If you turn on the news, there is fear-inducing rhetoric alongside calls.

Calls for peace. Most of you who have been around here long enough know that I try not to wade into partisan waters, I actually think that it is beneath the office of pastor, and certainly beneath the art of sermon to deliver any sort of partisan message. I also happen to think that partisanship is ultimately about control and power, and Jesus proclaims freedom. He proclaims freedom for all.

He proclaims freedom for those who are blind, freedom for the prisoner, freedom for the stranger. Freedom for all is Jesus’s proclamation. One of the things that is similar today that is similar in Jesus’s day is that there is political unrest. There is war and conversations about how do we make Rome great and all of these different conversations. There’s conversations in the religious circles surrounding the influence that the church has in the world around it.

And like today, people then tried to get Jesus in their corner. They were constantly asking him questions, trying to rope him into their point of view, whatever that point of view was. Conservative, liberal, full of hope for Rome, or trying to subvert that in the religious order. They constantly were trying to get Jesus to agree with them and that’s a struggle that many have today. But something that I want.

To point out for us is that just like then, today, there is no political party that can contain Jesus. There is no ideology that comes from the people of the world that can contain Jesus. Jesus’s vision of the kingdom of heaven is so far beyond the imaginations that we have, the ideas of control and power and influence that we have, and our organizations on the world’s stage cannot contain Jesus. And one of the reasons why is because Jesus holds together that which divides us with grace, and tension, and love, and truth. And where these things.

Can split us against one another in the kingdom of heaven, they are a source of coming together in unity and love. And that is where Jesus finds himself. So today, what I want to say to us is that whatever you are persuaded by, whatever version of the world’s ideologies that is most persuasive to you, I want to offer us all a bit of a litmus test to helping us understand whether we are in line with the kingdom of heaven as Jesus taught it, or if we are lining up with something else.

So here are three things for us to consider. First of all, and this all comes from the teaching of Jesus. First of all is this: Jesus called us to love God, and for that love of God to be demonstrated by our love for neighbor. So, the first question for us is whatever this narrative is that I am considering.

Does this enable me to love God and how does this influence my love for neighbor? What does it look like? Jesus said if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword. And that is not just true about a person. That is also true of nations versus other nations.

If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword. And then Jesus, this is the one that I think many of us get wrong, particularly when it comes to political engagement. Jesus said, even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give himself as a ransom for many. And you know when I turned the TV on, I hear.

A lot of people who are arguing for power and influence, and they give lip service to the idea of serving, but somehow aligning with them tends to give them power, not a humble service. And so, just as we consider how we move through the world and approach current events and view our neighbors, these three things I think are time-tested, Jesus-proved verses that we can use to help us guide. That one thing that I think is very important.

Is that Jesus can speak for himself. Right. We don’t need to put words in Jesus’s mouth. Of course, we proclaim the good news of Jesus by quoting the words that he said, but Jesus can

speak for himself. And if we who claim to follow Jesus will put our trust first in his word, then whatever comes after that will be far greater and better than anything that we could have drummed up on our own.

And the last thing I will say is this: if our concern is my side winning, then we have already lost sight of the kingdom of heaven. Because Jesus says the one who is first shall be what? Last. The one who is last shall be first. And those can be hard words for us, but again, if we will trust them above all things, and filter the rest of our uncertainty, then we are putting our trust in Jesus. And if it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me. Amen. Amen.

So let’s do what we can to be a community of people who above all of the things going on seeks to love God and love neighbor as self. And last week, what we talked about, this is an added bonus or a recap from last week. So if you weren’t here, this might be new.

If you were here, it’s a recap. A funny thing happens: Jesus says, love the Lord your God, your heart, soul, might, and love your neighbor as yourself. And then of course, everybody comes up to Jesus, and they begin to ask him questions like who is my neighbor. Right. We can be honest.

We all have people who try our patience. We all have people who get under our skin. We all have people who rather than love our neighbor, we would rather maybe offer curses for our neighbor. But as these people come to Jesus, and they say, Hey, Jesus, what about that guy over there? Or what about that person back there?

Or what if a person does this? Or what if a person does that? And Jesus, every single time somebody’s questioning who is my neighbor, makes it very clear that whomever is in your vicinity is your neighbor. Therefore, they are worthy of love. And that can be a hard pill for us to swallow, but that is the truth.

And if you think about on Father’s Day, I have the blessing of three children, and I love all three of my children. Up until this point in their lives, they have done very little other than annoy me from time to time to try my patience or love for them. But one of the things that I try to tell my kids is no matter what you do with your life, no matter where you find yourself, there will never be a moment where you escape the love that I have for you. Right.

And that’s the way that God feels about every single person who has ever walked this earth, who is walking this earth, and who will ever walk this earth in the future, who we would rather spit at than love, that we would pray for the fullness of the Spirit in that moment. Pray that God would allow us to see them as he does and to respond not as we would want to, but the way that the Spirit is leading us to respond. When we see somebody who perhaps has something to offer us instead of holding our hand out or using them to get what we want, that we would pray for the fullness of the Spirit to see them as God does, not as a transaction, but as a human being who we are called to love and care for, not to get something from.

And when we see someone in need, instead of walking past them and ignoring them, that we would pray for the fullness of the Spirit of God to fill us and lead us to serve as Jesus has called us to. May we learn to pray for the fullness of the Spirit.

This morning I was praying and studying the last bit of studying for this sermon today, and this past Christmas we, our family, got a new dog. Actually, my oldest daughter got a new dog, and he’s a little fluffball lap dog. And he’s cute, and I love him, but he can also be obnoxious. We have a bigger dog, and you can just kind of push him away. This dog doesn’t, he doesn’t listen.

He doesn’t listen to anything. And when you push him away, he just jumps right back on top of you. I am not a, I would not say that I am a dog whisperer, but I have never met a dog that didn’t love me. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s my baby face or the smell that I give off, but dogs love me. And I knew, I love dogs, and I knew that this dog and I, whether I wanted to or not, were going to become best friends.

And so whenever I sit down on the couch, within seconds this dog jumps in my lap, and I’ll move him away from me, and he’ll kind of inch up to put his paws on me. When I go to bed, he tries to get in my bed, which he is not allowed to get in my bed unless I let him up there, and I try not to do it, but he’s so cute and cuddly. And then when Kelly comes to bed, she puts him in Evelyn’s room. But in the mornings, whenever I’m sitting at my desk, he gets down underneath my desk, oftentimes will lay on top of my feet.

And this morning, as he was sitting down there, I guess he decided he wanted to make his next move, and he came around, and he put his paws up on my knees, and I just kind of pushed him off, and he jumped back up there again. And then he started kind of whining a little bit, and I looked at him, and I was like, okay. So I picked him up, and I put him in my lap, and I started petting him and scratching behind his ears, and you know, he just laid down and went to sleep there in my lap.

And I was thinking about that as I was annoyed by the fact that this dog was jumping out of my lap, and I thought, you know, this is a great illustration of how we ought to live in unison with the Spirit at the feet of Jesus, praying for God to wrap his arms around us, and to be present with us, and just simply to allow us to sit there and to be in his love, and to receive the fullness of the Spirit. So not only, I guess, am I encouraging you this week to pray for the fullness of the Spirit, I’m asking you to become a lap dog of Jesus.

Let’s pray together. God, fill us today with your joy and with your Holy Spirit. Let us know that you are with us. Give us strength to fulfill whatever it is that you are calling us to. We ask it in your name and for your sake. Amen.