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Elma United Methodist Church |
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What’s to Prevent Us? |
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Elma United Methodist Church |
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What’s to Prevent Us? Dan Shelly Elma United Methodist Church May 14, 2006 (Acts 8:26-40, 1 John 4:16b-21, Matthew 5:43-48)
This Sunday is Mother’s Day, a day we when we take time to honor and thank all of the women who throughout our lives have served as role models of strength, of care, and nurture – women who have helped all of us throughout the different phases of our lives.
I want to acknowledge that for some of us, the arrival of Mother’s Day may not bring us a time for recalling fond memories. For very few of our mothers felt like they ever measured up to the role models portrayed for us in the media by people like June Cleaver on “Leave it to Beaver”, Caroline Ingalls on “Little House on the Prairie”, Clair Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” or Carol Brady on “The Brady Bunch.” And some of us have painful or even abusive memories of our childhood, not the memories of love and nurture we wish we could recall. But even if that’s the case, I know that in each of our lives, there has been at least one or more special women who have shown us love and care. For most of us that person carries with her the title of Mother be it our biological mother, the mother who raised us, or the person we adopted to fill that role in our lives. So on this Mother’s Day, let’s take a few minutes just to honor those special women past and present who have been such a large part of our lives.
- Time of Sharing -
One common theme from the women that we have chosen to remember today is love. Love that we experienced in these women’s words and their actions. Love that grounded us in a sense of security and belonging either as a child, or during those times in our lives where we needed it the most. Love is the gift that was given to us by the women we honor today, and love is what the writer of 1st John uses when he describes God. He tells us,
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
As we grew and we learned about life and the world in which we lived, the people who showed us love in our lives were the people who helped us come to understand something about God, for God is Love and this Scripture tells us that those who abide in love, God abides in them. If we have God’s love in our hearts, it will shine through in our lives, for as Jesus told us nobody lights a lamp and then hides it under a basket, but they put it up on a lamp stand for all to see. And when God’s love is set ablaze in your heart, it’s the same thing. It’s set ablaze for all to see and for all to experience that love. And that’s the neat thing about lamps. When you put a lamp up on a lamp stand it doesn’t choose who it’s going to give light to. The lamp doesn’t say, “Oh, I like that person so I’m going to shine extra bright for them” or “That person made me mad before, think I’ll cast a shadow over them.” No, a lamp on a lamp stand shines its’ light equally on everyone that it encounters. It shines its’ light with impartiality – open and available to all. And that’s how God wants us to shine.
That’s how God wants us to share the gift of love that we’ve been given. Not just with those folks we like, not even just with those folks we “approve” of, not just with folks who look, or dress, or act, or talk just like us, but with everyone we encounter. But what about that person that we look at and we think, “Oh God, I’d be too scared to ever go and talk to that person!” Well our Scripture today addresses that too. It says,
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.
So if we do experience fear, don’t get discouraged, (isn’t that an interesting word by the way dis-couraged, dis = lacking + courage). Don’t get discouraged, but be encouraged. Be encouraged because the fear you have encountered just shows you that you just haven’t reached perfection in love yet. And be encouraged to pray for God’s love to grow within you until you come to the point that it drives out that fear.
I had a real encounter with the reality of this back before I came here to Elma when I was serving an internship in Tacoma. As part of my work with homeless teens and young adults, I spent lots of time on the streets of South Tacoma. And in most places and most situations, I didn’t have any problems with fear. In fact looking back on this, I’m amazed at how comfortable I felt in situations that so many folks considered dangerous. But there was one place where fear kept getting the best of me. Of all places, it was in the area just outside of the Tacoma Mall food court. That’s an area where homeless teens and young adults tended to congregate, but it was also an area whose turf was in contention between two rival groups the Crips and the Juggalos. I knew that many of the kids there carryed weapons and there was definitely an air of suspicion toward any outsider. Somehow that particular scene made all of my alarm bells go off whenever I was around there and it took several months of going to God in prayer before I was able to break through to the kids there. Perfect love casts out fear, and that place was showing me just how far I was from perfect love.
But that’s how God’s love is when we truly experience it. Not only is God’s love overflowing in its’ abundance, but it is no respecter of persons as well. God’s love is impartial. As Jesus told his disciples in Matthew,
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Be perfect in love, for perfect love casts out the fear that divides us from one another. God’s perfect love is what Phillip had encountered today in our reading from Acts. An angel of the Lord instructed Phillip to go out of Jerusalem an out onto a wilderness road, a place often populated by bandits and thieves, but Phillip didn’t question, he just went. And along his way he encountered a man,
An Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
Now to understand the significance of this encounter you have to remember that Phillip, along with all of Jesus’ disciples living in Jerusalem, were still observant Jews. They met together on Sunday, the first day of the new week, because they still spent Saturday, the Sabbath, worshipping God at Synagogue or the Temple. And they were still observing the Jewish laws but now with a Christian understanding. So the first thing that could cause Phillip a problem about meeting this man was that he was an Ethiopian. He wasn’t Jewish or even Samaritan, this man was a black African and most Jews would not associate anyone who was a non-Jew. Secondly, he was what was known as a God-fearer. This was a person who did not fully accept the Jewish religion, but feared God enough to want to be around those who did. This was a common occurrence and in fact most Jewish synagogues had a special “God Fearer’s” bench separated away from the Jewish believers where these people could sit, because they wouldn’t associate with them during worship. But the worst part about this stranger, strike three from a Jewish perspective, was that he was a eunuch. At that time, the Jews were still practicing strict purity laws, and because his body had been mutilated, the Pharisees and purity codes taught that he would never be acceptable in the eyes of God.
So this was the man that Phillip was sent out to meet, an Ethiopian, a non-Jew, and a eunuch – a man who in the eyes of Phillip’s Jewish culture already had three strikes against him and a person with whom no good Jew would associate. And this was the man who said,
‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’
At that moment, Phillip could have come up with any number of things that could prevent Phillip from baptizing him. But through Jesus, Phillip had encountered God’s perfect love, and perfect love casts out fear. So they stopped the chariot, went down to the river, and the man was baptized. Tradition has it that this man then returned to Ethiopia, and brought with him the Christian message which took hold and grew within that country for thousands of years. None of that would have happened if Phillip had let the fears of his culture, the fears of his upbringing, all those things that would have been considered common sense stop him from speaking with and baptizing this man on that road in the wilderness.
But where’s the “So What” for us in this story of Phillip? How does this make any difference in our lives today in 2006? Well, the good news here is that God’s love doesn’t change and God’s love never fails. The same love that allowed Phillip to put aside all of the restrictions of his culture and instead come to understand God’s love in a new way - available to all God’s children and able to make the possible out of impossible situations, the same love that allowed me to step past my fears and be with those kids outside the Tacoma Mall food court, that same love is available to all of us right here and right now in Elma.
And God’s perfect love casts out fear. Fear of the other, fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of a lost job, or lack of finances, fear of failing health, or failing family situations, fear over losing our congregation’s pastor or even fear because of situation’s we now find ourselves in of our own making – perfect love casts out fear. God’s perfect love casts out fear and opens up new possibilities. When we feel like we’re stuck, or that the world as we knew it is crumbling and falling apart, God’s perfect love is that sure foundation that allows us to stand and be that light, that lamp stand set on a hill for others to see and know of God’s love and God’s presence.
In our early years, we encountered God’s love through those women we remembered and honored today. But as we grow, there comes a time when that torch gets passed from them to us. There comes a time when we grow and become that mothering presence both for ourselves and for others – when we come to show through OUR words and OUR actions God’s unconditional, forgiving, and accepting love. And often the hardest person for us to forgive is ourselves, yet as we listen to the words of Jesus, we come to hear just how much we are already loved and treasured by God just the way we are. And the miracle of love is, that once you stop beating yourself up, once you come to see and know yourself the way that God knows you – as a Beloved child of God – it suddenly opens your heart up to share God’s love with others.
This Mother’s Day, remember that you are treasured; held and cradled within the deep and abiding love of God. Rest in that assurance and allow that understanding to grow deep within you. Allow that love to shine forth from within your heart in your words and your actions toward others. This Mother’s Day, allow yourself to become God’s Mother’s Day gift to the World.
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