Some Thoughts on the Coronavirus and Our Faith

I was going to preach about something else today.

I had a really good sermon prepared, but I scratched it because I knew I had to talk about the Coronavirus (COVID-19).

It seems that times like these make us seek out council from God.

And in times like these there are always some who offer what I believe they think is good advice but ultimately not helpful.

Here are some of my thoughts on what all this means.

First of all we should get rid of the idea that God is punishing us for something.

I know after 911 some preachers said that God was punishing for our sin of being too accepting.

You hear this a lot after some disaster.

I don't see any Biblical evidence that the way God punishes us is by sending some sickness.

In fact, Jesus tells us that these things that happen are not because of our sin.

I am thinking of the blind man that Jesus encountered in John's Gospel.

Jesus disciples ask him, "Who sinned this man or his parents, that he was born blind"

Jesus rebukes them saying, "neither sinned".

It isn't about that.

Maybe this gets to a core understanding of what it is to be human and that is to be human is to suffer.

There is no way around it.

There is no way to avoid being hurt.

There is no way to avoid getting sick.

There is no way to avoid dying.

That is what it is to be human.

It is what makes being human so scary.

We have done a lot in our modern times to give us the impression that these things don't apply to us.

I never imagined that we would be living with an international pandemic.

That seemed like something that used to happen a long time ago when people didn't have better medicine and sanitation.

I thought we were safe from such things.

But the truth is that we are really fragile people.

This is why we need faith.

We need faith to deal with this fragile state we find ourselves.

Because we don't like it.

We want it to stop.

We want to feel better.

We want to feel secure.

Maybe the only thing I have found that is secure in my life has been God.

God is always there.

The second thing that needs to be said about our faith and the Coronavirus is that it is not an unfaithful response to be scared.

It is not unfaithful to be sacred about what is happening.

I have seen a lot of things like, "God is our stronghold and we shouldn't fear".

But what we are talking about here is a virus that is spreading rapidly in our community and our country.

And fear is one way that God tells us to stop something.

I cancelled church this morning out of fear.

Fear that I might put you in harm's way.

Fear that we might continue to perpetuate this virus.

Fear is something that comes from our gut and tells us something is wrong and we should do something else.

However, even though I might have fear I am not afraid.

I know that seems like a contradictory statement.

Jesus tells us all the time to not be afraid.

Fear is my gut telling me to avoid certain things.

It is what tells me not to jump out of a plane, pet a snake, or try to ride a lion.

Being afraid is a state of eternal worry.

I trust God.

I trust that things will work out somehow.

It may not work out in the way I want, or expect but that it will work out.

It may not even be that "everything will be ok".

Maybe some bad things will go down, but with God I know I can deal with whatever comes my way.

I can deal with all of my complex emotions that I don't really want to deal with.

I can deal with fear, sadness, feeling anxious and uncertain.

At the bottom of my faith is the God I know in Jesus Christ.

It is the God that Paul tells us about in his letter to the Romans.

Paul tells us, "Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through Our Lord Jesus Christ."

We know that God is on our side.

Paul tells us that this doesn't mean that our lives will be with suffering.

Paul knows that to be human is to suffer.

Paul knows we will experience all those range of emotions we feel as humans.

But then Paul says something remarkable.

Paul tells us that God transforms our suffering.

God turns our suffering into hope.

God turns it into faith.

"…We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."

God takes things in our lives that are painful and turns them into things that give us hope.

Put another way, God takes our deaths turns them into resurrection.

We know this through Jesus Christ.

Because that is exactly what happens to Jesus on the cross.

Through his death and resurrection Jesus transformed suffering into hope.

So it is OK to have fear about what the Coronavirus will do.

But do not be afraid.

In faith I trust that God will turn it into something else.

I don't know what.

I just trust that every day I am dying and rising to new life in Christ.

That is what is my foundation of life.

It is what keeps me going.

That is what I hope for all of you to.

That this time we will learn endurance, character, and hope.

That this virus will bring us closer to God and each other.

It seems like a silly thing to say, because we are far apart today.

We are not in the same room.

And in this time what do we need more than anything it is to be together so that we can give each other comfort.

It doesn't seem possible for us to grow closer together, but I trust that we are learning new spiritual truths through this ordeal.

And that we are learning them in ways that we wouldn't have without it.

I am not saying God gave us the Coronavirus so we could learn deep spiritual truths.

I am saying the Coronavirus is part of our human life, and through living in faith with God we grow in our faith.

We come to have hope in God.

I know this has been true for me.

I have learned so much through some of the most horrible times in my life.

Every time I grow closer to God, and I learn to trust God more.

I hope the same for you during this time.

So as we deal with the Coronavirus I am praying for each of you that you may come to have endurance, that it may grow your character, and that you may continue to live in God's hope.

Amen.

I Don't Want to Be Part of a Liberal (or conservative) Church!

This week I was in Market Basket grocery shopping.

I ran into a bunch of people from the community and church.

And one of the people I ran into was a former member of Concordia Lutheran Church.

He said something that really irritated me.

I had to challenge him on it.

He called our church, "A liberal church".

It made me upset.

Because I don't want to be a part of a liberal church.

Not that I have anything against liberals.

I don't want to be part of a conservative church either.

Not that I have anything against conservatives.

It pains me to think that we have let the world's dividing lines define churches.

Because I want our church to be a Church of Jesus Christ.

I want it to be a place where we come together to know the love of God given to us in Jesus Christ.

That is my only purpose here.

I didn't become a pastor because I had lots of liberal views and I wanted to impart them on people on a weekly basis.

In fact, for a long time I didn't want to be a pastor at all.

I fought against it.

But God's will is stronger than mine.

And here I am.

I became a pastor because Jesus Christ saved my life.

Jesus Christ changed my life.

I don't mean that in some Jesus saved me so I can go to heaven some day kind of way (although that is true too).

I mean it literally.

That my life was a mess.

It wasn't going well at all.

I was lost and out in the wilderness.

I was headed for jail, or something worse.

And then God found me.

In the lost place.

God's grace came to me and lifted me out of the miry bog. and set my feet upon a rock.

And my life hasn't been the same since.

The way that I see the world, the way that I understand people and myself, comes from God saving me.

Part of that story is about John 3:16.

I remember the moment I first heard these words.

I was in a cabin at Camp Calumet.

I was a counselor in training.
I was there that summer against my will.

My parents were making me go.

It was devotions at the end of the day.

It was dark.

The counselor stood in front of the cabin with all the lights out and only a candle.

He read the text and said, "God loves all of you here more than you will ever know."

And the Holy Spirit in that moment touched my heart.

I saw God for the first time in this way.

I had other experiences that summer that only cemented for me this relationship with God.

I am wondering about you today.

What was that moment when God hooked you.

When you realized how much God loves you.

When you changed, or saw something from a different perspective?

It is that I want us to see every Sunday.

That is why I am pastor.

I want to share that with everyone.

And it doesn't matter what your politics are.

I want you to understand what Nicodemus doesn't.

I want you to be able to see the world from above, or new, or again.

I want you to see it through God's eyes.

And what God sees when God sees us is beloved.

God sees us as people needing saving.

Jesus tells us that God doesn't come to judge us, but to save us.

That is grace.

That is God.

That is what our church is about.

Isn't it sad to any of you that merely to say that God loves everyone without condition is somehow a liberal idea?

Why is being pro LGBTQ+ a liberal idea?

Where in the Bible does it tell us that God loves LGBTQ+ people less than any of us?

Where does it tell us that we should love our gay neighbor less than our straight one?

To me that is not a liberal or conservative idea it is merely the Gospel.

We have let the world infect our brain.

We have let greedy politicians tell us that we should somehow like people who we don't agree with less.

I spent some time this week thinking about when this started.

And I realized the answer.

November 1970.

That is when Lutherans in America ordained the first woman, Elizabeth Platz.

That is when the division began.

According to the former member the beginning of our liberalism was that our denomination allowed women to be pastors.

Because according to him that is also when we started to accept homosexuals.

Women ruined the church.

I want to ask again.

What is so liberal about having women preach the Gospel?

It was women who were the first to preach the resurrection.

(To men who didn't believe them!)

It was Phoebe, Prisca, Aquilla who St. Paul calls a fellow preacher of the Gospel.

Why does it matter what gender you are?

If you can tell the good news of Jesus Christ who cares?

You see the world in John's Gospel is anything that is against God.

It is anything that is hostile or hate filled.

It is anything that isn't full of grace and forgiveness.

It is anything that isn't full of love.

And I want to suggest this morning that we have let the world infect the Church.

We have let it tell us that God's love isn't for everyone.

It is only for a select few.

I reject that interpretation of the Bible, or any theology that is exclusive.

I suppose that is what makes us liberal.

I don't think that is a liberal point of view, unless you want to make it one.

It is a God's point of view.

I want to end this morning with an apology to all of you.

This isn't the first time I have heard someone who used to attend here tell me they left because they thought our congregation was too liberal.

I apologies if I let my personal political beliefs seep into my preaching or teaching of the Gospel.

I hope you will forgive me.

I also want you to know that it was never my intention.

My intention is only one thing…preach the Gospel.

To help us every week have that same experience I had that night at Camp Calumet when I heard John 3:16 read.

I want us to grow in our faith in Jesus Christ.

I want us to change so that we are filled with the Holy Spirit and ready to share God's love with the world.

That is what I want our church to be known for God's love for the world.

I don't believe that is a liberal message.

It is God's message given to us through Jesus Christ.   

Amen

The Space Between

When I was in Long Island I had a shut in named was Irene who lived about six houses down the street from the Church.

I would visit with her often.

She wasn't really in that bad of shape.

Mainly she complained about the arthritis in her hands.

And every time she would say, "You know pastor that is just the way it is".

She lived in the space that many of us find ourselves.

It is in the space that Jesus' finds himself in today's Gospel.

It is the space between assurance of faith and when trusting God is the hardest.

It is the space between knowing for sure that God is with us, and wondering where God went.

It is the space between having all the answers, and not knowing at all what is happening or what will happen.

When we read the temptation of Jesus it is easy for us to think of it as simply a test of Jesus being offered sin and Jesus rejecting it.

But the story is about more than that.

It is about identity.

"If you are the Son of God…"

Jesus is offered assurance of who he thinks he might be.

Jesus is offered easy answers in a more complex world.

Because many of us think this is the way faith works.

If I do this thing than God will give me this.

If I say the right prayer, or do the right deeds, then my life will all be fine.

And the truth is that it doesn't work that way.

Even the Son of God suffers for the world.

When I would visit Irene I would have loved to tell her that all she needed to do is have faith and her arthritis would be cured.

But it was like she said, "It is just the way it is".

There was no prayer for me to offer her.

There was no magic Bible passage to make it all better.

There was no magic potion.

And this is the hardest thing about our faith.

Is that there are no easy answers.

When we find ourselves in difficult times there is no way to get out of them that is fast and easy.

This week I talked to the husband of a woman who I did the funeral for a couple of weeks ago.

Bob's wife was only 34 and she died while giving birth to their son.

He called because he was upset.

It is natural to be upset after losing your wife.

I told him that I wish there was some easy solution for him.

But the truth was there is no easy answers.

There is only going through that painful process we go through when someone we love dies.

There is only the living day to day and feeling the full weight of that loss.

Jesus knows this.

He knows that the devil only offers easy answers to a faithful life.

You can't jump off a building to prove that God is mighty and powerful.

You can't just turn stones to bread.

You can't just claim power for yourself.

The only way to really be the son of God is to live a faithful life.

To trust God in all things.

To know that not everything has some easy answer.

Jesus will know this most of all on Good Friday.

And Jesus today gives us a great gift.

Jesus reminds us that there are no easy answers to our lives.

There is only the space that we live in between the assurance of faith and trusting God in really hard times.

That is the good news for us.

We too are children of God.

Our identity is not caught up in the idea that in order to be loved by God everything has to be great in life.

That God's love for us is not proved by how well our life is going.

This is an idea that is sometimes floated in the Bible.

That God's love is shown by your health or wealth.

If you are a good person than God rewards that goodness with health and wealth.

If you are bad person than God makes you suffer.

One thing I love about Jesus is that he does away with this simplistic view of our lives.

Because Irene hadn't done anything to deserve her painful arthritis.

Because Bob doesn't deserve for his wife to die in child birth.

These are just things that happen to people.

They are just part of being human.

And what we as Christians know is that God is with us in those times, as well as the good times.

Jesus taught us that faith is part of life.

It is the part that helps us get through the hard things that we suffer through in this life.

The real temptation that Jesus faces and the one that we face is offering up platitudes and easy answers.

Instead of acknowledging that indeed people do suffer and are suffering, we try to solve the problem with an easy theological idea.

The thing we have to remember is that we are human.

And no theological idea will solve the problem.

Jesus seems to know this.

And he knows that what will save us is his living our life.

That he has to go out and actually be with people.

He has to live among people that are suffering.

He has to go to the poor, the lame, the blind, the lost.

He has to be among them and let them touch him, hear him, be with him.

Because that is how real healing happens.

It doesn't happen in an instant.

It happens in time.

It happens when other human being acknowledge our pain and suffering.

It comes when we are able to name it for ourselves to other people, and feel heard.

There is no other path for Jesus.

Just as there is no other path for us.

It is as if the devil says to us on a daily basis, "If you are believer in Jesus Christ than you should be cured of your arthritis."

"If you are a believer in Jesus Christ than you should just be able to get over your wife's death."

"If you are a believer in Jesus Christ than nothing bad should ever happen to you."

"If you are a believer in Jesus Christ than you should have perfect health and lots of money."

Today is our day to resist the devil and all his empty promises.

We all have a story like Irene and Bob, a story of when the world was what it was.

A story of when trusting God seemed really hard.

We should know that there are no easy answers.

We should acknowledge that we live in that dessert space between assurance of faith and when trusting God is the hardest.

And we should live in faith.

Because we are children of God.

We know that it is when life is the hardest that God is at God's best.

It is there in the dessert when see that faith is what keeps us going through all of the hard things we face in this life.

If you are a believer in Jesus Christ know today that there is no easy answers only trusting in God to send angels that will care for you.

Amen

Keep Marching!

If you have heard me preach before I hope one thing always comes across.

I am not interested in the theories about God, I am interested in how God is lived out in our everyday life.

How do we as people of faith experience God?

How do we know God?

How do we live out our faith as parents, children, workers, bosses, friends, political participants?

As I was preparing to preach this week I was thinking about how Jesus "takes away the sins of the world."

And I started with lots of theories and then realized that none of them matter.

What matters is how we experience both sin and how we experience Jesus taking it away.

Let us start this morning with sin.

I wonder if you have ever been sworn at while at a prayer vigil?

On the second and fourth Tuesday of every month there is an interfaith prayer vigil in front of the federal Norris Cotton building in Manchester.

This prayer vigil is to support immigrants that are coming to check in at the ICE office.

As part of that prayer vigil we do what is called a Jericho walk.

We walk around the building seven times to pray that the walls that divide us will come down, just as Israel did when they came to the promise land.

Anyway, most of the time this is a fairly uneventful event.

However, there have been a handful of times when we have been sworn at.

Either by someone driving by.

Or in one case by a person looking from their apartment window.

We might disagree about immigration policy, but what comes out of the mouths of people yelling at us is not something I can repeat in church.

It is rude, ugly, cruel, and hateful.

It is one way I experience the sins of the world.

That we have constructed a hateful attitude towards someone because of their immigration status, or because they are not "one of us", is a sin.

Martin Luther King Jr. preached about the importance of seeing our connection to each other.

In his last Sunday sermon on March 31, 1968 from the National Cathedral he said, "We must all learn to live together as brothers (and sisters).

Or we will all perish together as fools.

We are tied together  in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.

And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."

Our sin is to divide our world up into sections, into us vs. them.

To make it seem as if the person in Iran, Iraq, or brazil is our enemy, instead of our fellow traveler on this third rock from the sun.

This is what leads us to wars, to injustice, to hatred of others.

Is that we don't see in each other our common humanity.

Or that we somehow want to believe that we are better than someone else, because of superficial things like what country we live in, or what our skin color is, or who we love, or how much money we have.

We might disagree about the nature of sin, but there is no doubt that it exists in our world.
It is a powerful source of our suffering.

Not just as individuals, but as a whole people.

This is not a theory.

It is a reality we live with everyday.

Because every day we are confronted with the symptoms of sin.

Death, destruction, hatred, violence, self-righteousness, delusions of grandeur.

Anyone who has been picked on, left out, made to feel inferior knows personally the results of sin.

And we see this on a larger scale in our politics and our dealings with other countries and other people.

All of it can be overwhelming when we think about it.

So what does a person of faith do?

One option that many people take is to try to retreat from the world and its sins.

To make our faith about removing ourselves from the world and the complicated problems that are involved.

In its most extreme we see this in monks and religious mystics who ran off into the dessert to avoid the world.

But even in less extremes I hear it in religious people who want to divorce themselves and just think that it all comes down to God and me.

That I have nothing to do with the messiness of politics, or what is happening to my neighbor.

All I need is to go into my room and pray and all will be well.

I suppose that there might be a time and place for this.

That the world is overwhelming sometimes.

That the sin that is out there becomes too much, and we must retreat.
Surely, there are times when Jesus went off to be alone and pray.

But I can't believe that this is the answer all the time.

I believe that Jesus takes away the sins of the world.

I believe that Jesus does this through love and grace.

That it is the Holy Spirit that calls us through God's word to love the world.

To go out into the world and fight for what is good and right.

And do it knowing that the world is full of sin.

I don't believe that it this will take away the sins of the world.

I believe God takes away the sins of the world.

And my acts of resistance, my acts of participation are acts of faith in that truth.

That this world is worth involving myself in.

That this world is worth my love and care.

That this world is not without hope.

That this world can is redeemed by God.

So I will make little stands of resistance against cynicism, despair, and sin.

I will march around the Norris Cotton building.

Not because I believe it will fall down, but because I believe in God's power to help us see the humanity in someone else.

I will march not because it stops our sin, but because I believe Jesus Christ takes away the sins of the world.

I will preach about love and unity.

Not because it will stop hatred and division, but because I believe that the word of God is more powerful than sin.

I don't know what it was like back in 1960's during the Civil Rights movement.

But I am sure that there were times when it seemed like nothing would change.

That it seemed like sin had won.

But people kept marching.

People kept speaking.

People kept believing.

For Dr. King and others what kept them going was their faith in Jesus Christ.

Today I want to honor that faith.

Not one of theories, but one that is lived in this real world.

The world with all of its ugliness and sin.

And a faith that preserves us and gives us hope in a better tomorrow.

So you can use all the profanity you want.

You can call me any name you want, but I will keep marching.

Because I believe in Jesus Christ who takes away the sins of the world.

This morning I hope you keep marching too.

Keep loving despite people's hatred.

Be kind, even though people can be cruel.

Keep hoping even though everything seems lost.

As Dr. King said about our hymn of the day, "When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our night become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows."

That is what keeps me going is that Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Amen

It Undermines Humane Standards of Conduct

Something I have learned from doing interfaith work over my life.

All people think their religion is better than others.

I don't care if you are Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, or whatever.

And the reason is that people's religion is usually the best one for that person.

I am no exception Christianity, and more specifically Lutheran Christianity, I have found is best for me.

It is the religion that makes the most sense to me, and for me.

There should be no problem with this.

It is fine to believe that the religion you practice is the best one for you.

The problem is that we don't always let that be the end of it.

We tend to want other people to also believe that our religion is the best.

I have had to learn this over a long period of time.

I have had to learn this by having discussions with other people about their religions.

I had to learn this through reading books about other religions and about my own.

I learned that Christianity has its own prejudices.

Our prejudice about Christianity shows up in all sorts of ways.

It certainly is shown in how we read and understand the Bible.

We tend to read into the text the idea that the original writers of the New Testament wanted Christians to understand that Christianity was far superior to other religions.

In particular, it was superior to Judaism.

And from this has sprung anti-semitism within the Christian church.

I won't this morning go through our history of the horrible things we have done in the name of Jesus to our Jewish siblings.

All I will say this morning is that there is a lot there.

And it is horrible, and we as the Church need to confess our sin of being part of this prejudice.

This morning I want us to see not just this idea that we messed up and should feel bad for it, but I want us to re-frame the way we understand the Bible and our faith is Jesus Christ.

I want to use as our test case our reading from the Gospel of John.

When we read this passage we read into it the idea that before Jesus came into the world there was something wrong with religion.

What I believed as a kid (I am assuming because I was taught it at some point) was that Christianity was based on grace and Judaism was based on the law.

And through Jesus God has given us grace.

That is what makes Christianity better than Judaism.

And the Gospel from John seems to support that idea.

That "God came to his own people and they did not accept him."

But to "those who believe in him  he gave the power to become children of God."

This is to misunderstand John and to misunderstand Jesus and God.

God's own people are us.

As John tells us God created the world.

Not some of the world but the whole thing.

Through God's word the world with the plants, animals, and humans came into being.

So the people that are God's own is all of us.

And it is not that they didn't accept Jesus it is that they didn't accept what Jesus had to tell them about the nature of God.

God is about love and grace.

And for some that is really hard to understand and even harder to accept.

And let me tell you that I have met in my life people of every faith that is about love and grace.

People that live that out, and people that understand it better than some people who call themselves Christians.

The cosmic scene in John is not meant to tell us that Christianity is better than Judaism, but that God's love was given to the world, and the world couldn't accept it.

The world in John is a code word for anything that is against God.

And hatred, bigotry, meanness, is against God.

Love and grace are God.

And when we love our neighbors with generous grace and service we do the works of Jesus.

There is no doubt that within the Gospel of John there is tension with what John refers to as "the Jews".

This comes from John's own experience within his community of being expelled from the Jewish synagogue.

As my New Testament professor once told me that we see in the New Testament a family fight.

It is a fight between Jewish-Christians and Jews who didn't believe Jesus to be the Messiah.

That tension is played out not just in John but in most of the New Testament.

It is human in those cases to paint your enemy in the most unflattering light.

We can't take what was a human fight over religion and make it into a codified hatred of other people based on God.

I don't care what religion someone is, I care about what it is that they do because of that religion.

If you are a Christian that spews hatred towards Jews then I can't believe that you know the Jesus that is talked about in holy scripture.

It is through love that people know that we are Christian.

It is through service that we show them Jesus Christ.

It is through grace that we live in God.

And that is true of any true religion.

Like I said I learned this through my years of doing interfaith work.

And I have always had a curiosity about my faith, and the faith of others.

But I really didn't get to know people of other faiths until college.

One of the people who meant a lot to me at that time was women named Patti Mittleman.

She was the director of the Hillel house on campus.

This was the Jewish student group.

This made her the Jewish college chaplain.

Over my time in college we did lots of interfaith things together.

And I got to know her pretty well.

She was actually a convert to Judaism.

Patti used to say, "they don't recommend it."

But she converted when she married her husband Alan.

Her husband Alan taught religion at Muhlenberg.

One summer I actually spent some of it at their house, and some of it at the Hillel house.

I kept kosher that summer while staying there.

Using separate plates for meat and dairy.

Learning about why that spiritual discipline was important to them.

The thing about Patti was that she was filled with love and grace.

She was always really kind to me, more than I deserved.

Often when she talked about me I wondered who she might be talking about.

She was one of my cheerleaders, and someone who I looked up to.

She was Jewish, but what did that really matter.

She practiced her love of God in a way that was different from me.

But She showed the world God's love all the time.

She died about a year ago, and I realized that she showed that love to lots and lots of students just like me.

I carry a piece of her all the time in my heart.

I knew this morning that I was going to be preaching about anti-Semitism, because of the stabbings that happened over Hanukkah.

Our Rabbi here in Concord posted on Facebook an article about how afraid and angry our Jewish siblings are right now.

This issue is not about something happening somewhere else.

Our Rabbi here in Concord has had death threats against her.

That is why it is so important for me to speak out about it.

I reached out to Alan (Patty's husband) to ask him what he would like Christians to know about anti-semitism.

He responded, "I think that anti-semitism never stops with the Jews.

It degrades all who endorse it and undermines humane standards of conduct.

It’s not really about the Jews either.

It’s about the hateful fantasies and delusions of people who project their disordered imaginations onto the Jews."

I agree with Dr. Alan Mittlemen.

When we hate someone for their religion, or race, or sexual orientation, or what country they come from it undermines humane standards of conduct.

We Christians know the greatest love "that of a Father's only Son".

How can we not give that to the world?

How can we not love others as we ourselves have been loved.

That is the message of the Gospels, and anything else is simply a projection of our own prejudices.

God loves the world.

God loves us.

We love others.

It is really that simple and also really hard to live out.

In God's grace and love let us today live it out.
Amen