Sunday, July 1, 2018

Known by our fruit:love

*Remember these texts are written in a verbal style that fits my preaching. Remember also that since I have started preaching without my text it doesn't always come out the same on Saturday and Sunday.  If you prefer to watch the video of the Sunday morning proclamation, you can do that by visiting  www.Carrollunitedmethodist.org and looking for the sermon videos.   You can also watch us live on youtube on Sunday at 10am. 


Known by our fruit UMC: Love
7/1/18
Carroll FUMC

I’m going to put you on the spot today. If you don’t want to answer just wave me off as I approach you.
What is your first thought when I say “FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH” <<<4-5 PEOPLE>>>
Isn’t it interesting all the different answers we give?
I’ll give you your homework early this week… Sometime this week I want each of you to ask two people outside our church “what comes to mind when I say Carroll first UMC?” Remember their answers because I will ask you next week.

 Our first series of sermons is called “known by our fruit.” It focuses on the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” We will be asking the question, “What fruit is our church known for?” “As a Church, what fruit are we bearing?” And”How can we be more fruitful?” We will examine one fruit each week.

 This week we talk about LOVE.
The ancient church father from North Africa, named Tertulian, imagined what others should see as they look at the church. He wrote “Let them say Look . . . how they love one another; and how they are ready to die for each other. ” You might wonder about dying for one another, but let’s talk about the meaning of Love.

 First, we have to understand that God is, at the heart of God’s being, LOVE. I John says, “God is LOVE!” The entire Bible is God’s love story. Not like a Harlequin romance, thankfully. But God creates the world, through love. God protects the Israelites because of love. God sends a Savior out of love. The cross is a sacrifice of love. The resurrection is perhaps the greatest miracle of love of all time. Even the consummation of the world in Revelation is out of love… “Behold I make all things new”, “I wipe away every tear from their eye …There will be no more crying, no more pain.” That sounds like love to me, from beginning to end the Bible is a love story… the story of God’s love for creation. .God’s love for us… and God’s yearning for us to love God and one another.
  As the Pharisee found out in Matthew 22 the two greatest commandments are “Love God and love neighbor.”
From beginning to end, this is a book that is trying to send us a simple but powerful message. God loves you more than you can ever imagine. There is nothing you can do to change that. That message calls for a response… which is, of course, to love God and love neighbor. When we do that perfectly, we have mastered the faith… but I for one, have a long ways to go.
 So what is this fruit of the spirit of love? Let’s just say, it is not a feeling, it is not words, it is not the romantic love which is an entirely different word in Greek. It is not brotherly love, because Greek has a different word for that too. I Corinthians 13 gives us a list of things that love is not: “Love is not envious, arrogant, rude, selfish, irritable, resentful, and it does not rejoice in wrongdoing.”
 So what is love? First, Love is a verb which means action… and second, it is sacrificial …third it is unearned or unqualified.
Our scripture this morning is the well known Good Samaritan.
When we read the story we can imagine the Levite ran by on the other side of the road pretending that he didn’t see the man. The priest may have gone by on the other side and even though it doesn’t say, it would not be out of character for the priest to pray for the man or offer a blessing from afar.
 The Samaritan, however, loved.
First, he acted. He stopped, knelt down, bandaged, comforted, carried the man to the inn, and paid for his care.
  Second, he acted sacrificially. He may even have put his own self in danger by stopping on that dangerous stretch of road. The man could have been a decoy so robbers could attack anyone who stopped to help. He sacrificed his own supplies, comfort, time, and even his money when he paid for the man’s care.
 Finally, it didn’t matter who these two men were…Samaritans and a Jews had a long-running hatred of each other) They could just as easily been rich and poor, gay and straight, black and white and all shades of brown, liberal and conservative, democrat or republican, man or woman; it just doesn’t matter to love. When we are showing Christian love… everyone and anyone deserves to be loved. No qualifications, not criteria,
James 2:15 says, “ If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food,  and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?”  Really! What good is it to say we love each other if we don’t visit when someone is in the hospital, or take soup when they get home? What good is it if we don’t provide food or rent assistance or a tank of gas to a family is struggling? What good is our love if we don’t comfort one another in our grief, support someone in the midst of an ugly divorce, help a parent worn out by the kids. Offer to relieve an exhausted caregiver. What good is our love if we avoid the unpleasantness of fighting an addiction or depression, or temptation?
•             What good is it to say “good luck,” or the Christian equivalent “we are praying for you and we love you” if we don’t act.  If we don’t put those prayers into action we are missing the point of love!
•             Loving always costs us something… either time, or energy, or money…love is always sacrificial.
•             And love does not discriminate.  It doesn’t matter who it is. It doesn’t matter what they have done to us.  It doesn’t matter how different we are.
Think of the person or group that is hardest for you to tolerate… they just make your skin crawl.  Now show them love… that is Christian love acting sacrificially to love anyone and everyone. We have to put the love into action by visiting them, feeding them, comforting them, encouraging them, offering to take the kids to a movie, or offering to sit with an ill loved one, or taking them to AA or helping them to make that first difficult call to a mental health center, or offering them an alternative to temptation. THAT is love. Not just fancy words in the bible, but letting those words bear the fruit of actually acting sacrificially on someone else’s behalf.
God’s love is sacrificial action the sacrificial action of creating, leading, protecting, coming, living, dying, being raised again for each and every one of us.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.”  God loved so much that he acted decisively, sacrificially, and on behalf of the world… each and every one of us.  And … and our love needs to be a decisive sacrificial action for anyone who needs to be loved… and isn’t that all of us?

Let’s get real with real with each other. If we want people to say, “See how they love one another” we have to actually love one another.
So, you know I am new here… what do we do in this church to love one another… people inside or related to our church family? <<< >>> SEE HOW THEY LOVE EACH OTHER <<<several times>>>
 And let’s take it a step further. What do we do in this church or in our lives to love others who are not yet part of the congregation? What do we do that makes people say “see how they love others?” <<< >>>SEE HOW THEY LOVE OTHERS <<<several times>>>
The fruit of the spirit is love. It sounds to me like we bear the fruit of love pretty well.  That is most of the battle… remember the most important commandments? LOVE GOD… LOVE NEIGHBOR.  I think that is why Paul put Love as the first fruit of the spirit. In fact, if the only fruit our church or our lives ever bore was love… the rest would fall in to place.
The apostle John is said to have gone deaf and spent the last years of his life repeating “Little children love one another.  Little children love one another.”  Let me leave you with a similar admonition. Love is the beginning and the end of being a church… friends, let us be a church about which they say… “See how they love” Go and love.


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