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SERMONS:
Pastor Peg posts her sermons from our most recent sermon series on this page. If you are interested in reading more of her sermons you can go to pastorpeg.wordpress.com. Our last series was The Joyful Kingdom, which examined some of the joys that Easter brings us. Our current series is an examination of events in the Acts of the Apostles. Enjoy.
Being the Church
May 31, 2026 Trinity Sunday
Acts 2:42-47 Philippians 2:1-4
Our current sermon series is looking at the Book of Acts and how the disciples brought about the early church. We started with Jesus's ascension and then last week we talked about Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit gave the gift of languages to the disciples. Today we're going to talk about the early church.
The early church was not wealthy. The majority of the disciples were the 85% who lived in poverty. Some of them might have had businesses, such as being a potter or a carpenter. Some of them might have been laborers, such as farm workers or fishermen. We do have a hint that some people might have been merchants or members of the priesthood. Joseph of Arimathea supposedly was a tin merchant, and Nicodemus was a Temple official. Jesus appealed to a wide variety of people so probably there were some well off members of the community but for the most part these were people who did not have a lot of money or a lot of physical assets.
They did not start out with church buildings. They met in each other's homes where they worship and shared meals together. But the main thing that this group of people did was they set up a support network to help each other. And not only did they help each other, but they also make it their mission to help out those in the greater community who didn't have any support. So, widows, orphans, and older people who didn't have a family connection were served by this community.
Think about this: You're a poor widow who has no husband, children, or extended family, and you're struggling to survive. And all of a sudden this group of people starts to bring you some food, and asks you what you need. Do you need a new cloak or a blanket perhaps? Can we gather some firewood for you? Do you need someone to help you clean or cook? This is very nice; people are helping you out, but you're going to ask them: Why are you doing this? And the answer from the community is: Our Rabbi, Jesus Christ, taught us that we need to show our love for each other love by helping and supporting each other and other people.
And you might say: Really? Who is this Jesus? Isn't he that rabbi who was crucified a while ago? And this starts a conversation. The people will tell you of their experiences with Christ. Of the kind words that he said; of the miracles that they witnessed; and they would say: God loves you and you are saved, and explain to you what that salvation meant.
They would tell you this radical idea that Christ paid the price for whatever sins you had committed, so you don't have to keep beating yourself up for not being perfect. They would tell you another radical idea, that you too have a place in heaven. That it’s already prepared for you. Yes, even though you’re poor, you have a place to go. They would tell you all the wonderful stories connected to Jesus.
And it is not surprising, because of the love and care that the early disciples gave to other people and the stories that they told about Jesus, that people joined the community. And the community grew until, after 300 years, it was so big that it had to be acknowledged as the main religion of the Roman Empire.
But there's a funny thing that happens to religions. They usually start out as small, contained belief systems among a group of people. If they answer a spiritual and social need for a population then they grow. But as they grow, they become more institutionalized. Not immediately, but early on the early church started to rent or create separate spaces to meet in. Usually, these spaces were a room connected to the minister’s house. The minister’s part of the house would only be one or two rooms, and then there would be a special attached room to the house which functioned as the place of gathering. This space was used for worship, but it was also used as a place to eat, or have official meetings, or a place to just hang out and socialize with your church friends.
But then churches started to be managed in groups, usually, because you didn’t have enough ministers to start with and ministers took care of several churches. But eventually Christianity did have enough ministers to go around and then churches were joined by regions, which got larger and joined other regions, and then became more international until finally we had Rome and the Vatican.
Now when things get top-heavy, any religion starts to split. There’s a movement within for more independence, and new denominations are formed. This is a normal cycle that all religions go through. But that doesn’t mean that a church is dying. It just means that the church is seeking relevance in the world through the best way to serve its community.
Methodism is a classic example of this. The Methodist church didn’t start out as a denomination. It started out as a society of spiritual growth and mission within the Anglican church. The people that started it wanted to live more active Christian lives and formed groups to study the Bible and then applied Jesus’ teachings in the real world.
Where did they meet? Mostly in people’s houses. When Methodist groups got big enough, they built meeting houses which served as worship and study centers, but also as spaces for schools, clinics, and group meetings. Doesn’t this sound like the early church? And it’s interesting to note that in John Wesley’s General Rules there is a line that Methodists will support other Methodists. First to support them in their spiritual growth and endeavors and second to support them in businesses. Now this didn’t mean that you couldn’t use a plumber who wasn’t a Methodist, but it did mean that whenever possible you would actively support a business owned by a Methodist or employ a Methodist for your business. The idea was to support your community.
So, if you look at the church community, from the beginning it has a dual purpose. First of all, to provide a space of spiritual renewal and growth. The spiritual renewal comes from our community worship. Being together, singing and praying, and looking at a Bible scripture, gives us a time to put away the outside world and focus on connecting with God. To grow we should provide a place where people can come and freely wrestle with their problems. Where they can say: How can I live this situation in my life as a Christian? That answer is not always self-evident. Life is complicated and often we have to wrestle with sticky situations that seem to have two bad choices. It helps to have friends who will listen to your problem and help you. That’s what small groups like Bible study, United Women of Faith, or class meetings are for.
The second purpose is to provide a platform to reach out into the community and support it, in whatever is needed. Some churches have food banks or thrift stores. Some have Alcohol Anonymous or substance abuse support meetings. Some places have grief or cancer sessions. Some provide spaces for charities to meet. I know of one church, in a rather impoverished area, which had a community sewing circle that made blankets, bibs and baby supplies for newborns. Each church needs to look at their community and find what needs to be supported, and then decide what the church can do.
So, to be a church we need to ask ourselves: How can we support our members spiritually, and in the world outside? And, how can we lift up the community that we live in? It doesn’t take a building to do this, it takes people. First and foremost, the people are the church. People who are dedicated to helping out and making whatever is needed happens. People who want to grow spiritually and show their love of God through actions of love as we serve others in our church family and our greater community.
So, let’s take advantage of our church. Let’s pool our resources – that doesn’t necessarily mean our money, it also means our talents, gifts and graces and use this space and the support of our people to help grow closer to God. Let’s use our church to serve and lend a helping hand, to create a small piece of God’s Kingdom that we can live in right now in celebration of God’s love.
Filled with the Spirit
May 24, 2026 Pentecost
Acts 2:1-13 Acts 2:14-21
Pentecost, like Easter and Christmas, is one of the high-holy days of the Christian Calendar. It is the day that the disciples received the gift of the Holy Spirit and when the Christian Christ started.
We say that the Holy Spirit is the messenger that gives us feelings that show us the way to follow the teachings of Jesus and points us to right actions that help us to build the Kingdom of God. It sometimes comes in a voice within us or a voice we hear outside of us. I know of people who say that they heard a voice, either within or without, which pointed them onto a career path.
It sometimes comes as a suggestion from someone. Before I went to Japan, I met a friend who was going to graduate from college, and I asked her what she was going to do. She told me that she was planning to go to Japan to teach. My friend was not a teacher and had a degree in art. I asked her: How can you go get a job in Japan if you don't have a teaching degree? She said: Oh, they don't care, anyone can go and teach in Japan. This was not entirely true, she had some false information. But when she said teaching in Japan it was like there was this resonance in my body, as if I was being given a direction for me to take. I started to explore the idea, and I ended up in Japan for 16 very good years.
It sometimes comes as a series of hints. I remember I was looking for a prayer book and within one week a book, Draw the Circle, came up in three different conversations, and I happen to see it randomly on Amazon. God was telling me it was just the book I needed at the time.
It sometimes comes simply as a feeling of rightness that you are supposed to be in this place, at this time, doing this thing. And often when that happens, you get into this zone and you feel powerful and unstoppable while you're doing that action.
In the case of the disciples, forty days after Easter, on the day Jesus ascended to heaven, he told them to go to Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit to come to them. Ten days later, on the Jewish festival of Shavout, the spring harvest festival, the disciples were at the inn getting ready to celebrate.
The Holy Spirit was anticipated, but not expected. Do you remember that when people asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God and the Restoration of Israel was going to happen? What did Jesus say? It is not for you to know the day or the hour. It wasn’t the disciples’ job to know when the Holy Spirit would come, they just had to make themselves ready to receive it.
One of the ways that they made themselves ready was to follow the observances of the Jewish religion. Jesus, after all, hadn’t told them not to be Jewish. Yes, Jesus questioned the application of the law; he questioned customs that shut people out of community; he questioned practices that restricted people from helping each other when it was needed; and he spoke out against bigotry and exclusion. But he believed in the observation of religious ceremony that helped people to get close to and connect with God. Shavout is a very important holy day that gives thanks for the creation of the world and the sustenance that allows us to live. So today, while we are celebrating the Holy Spirit coming into our lives, I also want us to give thanks for this beautiful world we live in, and to all those people who dedicate their lives to providing us with food. And let’s pray also for a good and bounteous harvest.
The Gospels and Acts tell us that the disciples went back to Jerusalem prayed every day at the Temple. They were living in a pious community. This tells us that the disciples were in a state of holiness and were open to receiving the Spirit.
Now I know that sometimes the Spirit does come to people, like Saul, who are doing not so good things, and pushes them onto the right path. This happened to John Newton, the sea captain who wrote Amazing Grace. He was on his deck, importing a load of slaves to America, when he was struck down by such a feeling of remorse and shame for what he was doing that he turned the boat around back to Africa and set the slaves free. And he had to pay for that loss. He then became an abolitionist minister and gave us the song of hope and strength that we still sing today.
But interestingly, Saul and Newton were people who did believe in God and who worshiped regularly. Most people set right by the Holy Spirit are open to the possibility of God. As disciples we participate in the discipline of worship and connecting to God and Jesus so that we can hear them better through the Holy Spirit.
The first gift of the Spirit was the gift of languages. Most of us try to learn a language when we’re in high school as a requirement for college. Learning a language has a lot of benefits for the brain actually. People who learn a second language, even if you never use it, can often see alternative ways of doing things and have better reasoning capabilities. But if you get to a higher level of a language you begin to understand the cultural nuances connected to the culture of that language. You have a greater, more empathic, understanding of the people of that culture.
You see God wasn’t just preparing the disciples to go out and spread His word to people of other nations, he was preparing them to understand where those people were coming from so they could meet them with understanding. You know that list of people who hear the disciples speaking? Those are also the fifteen major languages of the day. Most of the disciples had never been beyond the borders of Israel and they would need that extra cultural context if they were going to go to out and preach Jesus’ word. When we’re telling people about our faith we need to first meet people where they are to understand how Jesus can help them in their lives, not demand that they come into our lives and understanding.
Remember, just as God loved those disciples at Pentecost for who they were with all their flaws, he loves whoever we are trying to help. We are not perfect, neither are they, so we need to meet people where they are.
The gift of languages was the gift that was needed at the time. When you are filled with the Spirit you don’t have to speak in tongues, but usually an encounter with the Spirit does surprise you by showing you an ability or resource that you didn’t know you had. I remember when a few of my fellow students asked me to help them get through a philosophy class in college. For some reason I seemed to get the material. Halfway through the study session for the final exam it hit me that I had the ability to teach – to take content and make it understandable for others. That was quite a rush of understanding, and it felt like a fire inside me. It got me going on a completely different career path of teaching, which has given me some great life experience.
When that happened, things felt right, and positive, and I felt very strong in that moment, like I could do anything. That’s the Spirit talking to you.
But the Spirit can also guard you. I remember there was a party I was invited to once of some people who were friends, but when I got there something felt very off and I got this strong feeling that I should leave. So, I said I was tired and went home. Some bad stuff went down that night between two people, which fortunately I wasn’t there for. No one was arrested or got hurt but I realized after that this was a negative group of people who I didn’t want to stay involved with. I believe that the strong feeling I had to leave was also the Spirit talking to me.
So be on the lookout for the Spirit in your life and don’t discount those feelings. Yes, some people are going to call them instinct and maybe it is a bit, because God gave instincts so we could survive. But if it’s a feeling or message of rightness, or a feeling or message of wrongness then that is God connecting to with the Spirit so you’ll take an action in the right direction. Open your heart and mind and you’ll always live in the Spirit and have the fire of God in your heart.
What are We Waiting For?
May 14 &17, 2026 Ascension Sunday
Luke 24:44-49 Acts 1:1-11
From the beginning Christianity has lived with the idea that Jesus is going to come back to earth, defeat all the legions of evil, and restore it to a paradise. Heaven and earth will no longer be two separate realms, and everyone will live in peace and harmony. This idea comes from Jewish theological tradition. Many Old Testament prophets predicted that God will restore the country of Israel and that all the nations will come to recognize that God is the supreme God of everyone and everything.
But a new or renewed world is not limited to Christianity. Most major religions have some version of a restoration of a perfect paradise. Either the paradise existed before, like the Garden of Eden, or the paradise will be realized in the future, like the Baha’i and some Buddhists sects.
Many scholars have debated where this idea originates in the collective human consciousness. In the last century it’s been discovered, from extensive studies of the world climate through time, that before 5,000 BCE the climate of the Middle East was a lot different. The Sahara Desert was much smaller and the areas around the Nile and other rivers, like The Euphrates, were more like tropical forests, with elephants and other forest animals, unlike the arid regions of today.
This has led many historians, anthropologists, and archeologists to speculate that the idea of a past paradise, like Eden or the Golden Ages of many cultures, is actually referring to this time. In our collective cultural psyche, we have a memory of climate abundance and the peace and harmony that existed with a lower population and tribal interactions. And we translated this into the myth of lost paradise and the possibility of that paradise coming back to us in the future. We know it was there once and we believe that it can be again.
Christians have named this as the coming of the Kingdom of God. In this kingdom the earth will be fertile and provide us with all the food we need to eat. We won’t need to worry about our homes being destroyed by natural disasters. There will be no violence among animals; Isaiah 11:6: The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. As well as people; Isaiah 2:4: They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. One nation will not lift up a sword against another, nor will they ever again be trained for war.
Jesus was asked several times during his ministry when this restoration would take place, and his answer was always the same: It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. He did caution people to be watchful and to be ready for the moment, which could come at any time, but he refused to name a date.
These statements influenced the early church. Paul and John especially believed that the moment was going to happen during their lifetime or within a few decades. Both of them wrote about the coming and urged people to keep themselves devoted to God. But this idea of an imminent restoration wasn’t without controversy.
When the Council of Nicaea, in 325, was debating which books to put into the Bible and which to leave out, Revelations, the book about what would happen with the coming of Christ, only made it in by one vote. Many people argued that it would encourage people to only think about the second coming and not focus on the mission and ministry work that needed to be done in the present.
And in some ways their caution was warranted. Over the centuries humans have gotten caught up in end-of-the-world-restoration-hysteria. At the turn of the first millennium nearly everyone in Europe went to sleep in their local churches, convinced that it was a safe place to ride out the destruction of the world. When they woke up the next day and went outside nothing had changed. Think of all the cults in our lifetime that predicted the end of the world and the coming kingdom that never showed up.
So, what are we waiting for? Are we waiting for God’s Kingdom to suddenly come with Jesus descending from the clouds and legions of angels at his back? Are we waiting for the four horsemen of the Apocalypse to ride through town? Are we waiting for that perfect world to suddenly be manifested around us?
Personally, I’m not waiting for any of that. First of all, because Jesus told us not to wait for it or worry about it; that it’s all well above our pay-grade. Second, because the idea of me waiting feels similar to a girl waiting by the phone for her boyfriend to call when she could be out with her friends having a good time. I’m not going to put my life on hold waiting for the perfect world. I have things to do, places to see, and missions and ministries to act on.
But actually, I think that the idea of a perfect world is a good idea. It’s part of our Christian heritage to try to make ourselves better people and the world a better place to live. It gives to us a positive ideal that we can work toward. And I believe that that’s what we’re supposed to do.
You see, I believe that the creation of God’s Kingdom is a two-way street. On the one hand you have God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit working up in heaven and planning for good things that can happen on earth. On the other hand, there is us, working with God’s justice; Jesus’ teachings of how to love each other in our daily lives, and missions and ministries; and the Holy Spirit, who gives us nudges in the right direction and power when we need it. And we take all that and we use it to make the world around us a better place to live. It’s a cycle of the plan and the energy from heaven flowing down to us, and the energy of our actions flowing up to heaven. And, at some point, we don’t know when, those actions are going to meet in the middle and create a new reality.
Now what that new reality will be, I have no idea. But it’s not something we need to worry about. You let God & Jesus worry about the timeline and the result. We just need to worry about what’s happening right here, right in front of us.
So, what do we need to do while we’re waiting for it all to come together?
First of all, take care of yourself. This can be selfish if you are only taking care of yourself FOR yourself. What we do is take care of ourselves so that we can love and serve others. Eat right, exercise a little, and get enough sleep. And for your own peace of mind stay away from the negative as much as you can. I know we can’t cut that out entirely from our lives, but balance the negative with positive experiences and people. And give yourself time to connect with God: Through prayer, journaling, nature walking, or a hobby. Also, don’t be afraid to grow and change. God did not make us to stay the same all our lives. We are continual-learning creatures.
Second, take care of the people and the world around you. Our lives are made up of interconnected relationships. Think of your life like a collection of expanding circles. In the first circle you have your family. In the next you have your friends. In the next you have people in your community. Then we have the larger communities of our county, state, region and country. And finally, we have a relationship with everyone in the world. Maybe not directly to everyone all the time, but the possibility of connecting is there.
We connect with all those people, in all those circles, through the actions of love that we give to each other. Through the ministries and work that we do in our communities to make them better places to live. Through the mission work that reaches beyond our immediate boarders. All that energy is poured into the world and is used by God to further the design that He’s working on.
There’s nothing wrong with waiting for the Coming of Christ. But don’t spend your time just waiting. Use the time that God is giving you to become and be better and more loving; to reach out and make the world around you better and more loving. And who knows, someday we might see a new world being made right before our eyes.
The Joy of Knowing Our Worth
May 10, 2026 6th Sunday of Easter Mother’s Day
Psalm 139:1-6 1 John 3:1-6
It is hard for us in this day and age of democracy, public education, equal rights, and many opportunities, to comprehend how truly revolutionary Jesus was in his teachings.
Back when Jesus was preaching 80% of people lived in poverty and many of them did not own the houses or the land that they lived on. They were tenant farmers or laborers who were dependent on the property owners for their security. Most people worked for barely minimum wage, and they had no say in the manner of how they worked or when.
The local Jewish synagogues did try to teach boys how to learn how to read and write, but many children didn’t last past the ages of 10-12 before they went to work in adult jobs, thereby ending their education. Only women in the upper classes of society were taught to read and write and that was only if you had progressive parents.
People did have certain rights under Jewish law and custom, but unless you had some social or political influence you had practically no rights under Roman law. A young man could be conscripted at any time by the army for a construction project, and many were. This caused economic hardship because it was one less person who could work for the family.
People were very much locked into their family’s work. If your father was a carpenter or fisherman, you became a carpenter or fisherman. You probably never traveled farther than the town next to you. Although if you lived in Israel, you might travel to Jerusalem for one of the High-Holy days at least once in your life.
The impoverished population was not considered to be of worth socially or politically. They were fodder to keep the production of necessities flowing to the very small middle class, mostly consisting of traders and government officials, and the only slightly larger upper class, mostly consisting of landowners.
So, where did those 80% find their self-worth? Well, I think they found it in their families. I think they found it in the excellence of their work. And I really think they found it in their faith. If you look at the psalm that we read today (and remember that palms are ancient songs that we’ve lost the music to) you see that this is a song of assurance. A reminder to the singer that God knows them, surrounds them, and is with them always.
But this sentiment wasn’t supported by the world at large. I’ve mentioned before that Jewish law and custom was very strict and it was almost impossible for a poor person to keep all the laws. So that 80% was constantly living in a state of sin and was looked down upon by the more fortunate as being unworthy of God’s attention. I am sure that this weighed on people. No matter how positive you try to be, if you are constantly being made to feel that you’re not worthy of God’s love, you’re going to start to believe that.
And then, to your town comes a Rabbi. He’s well versed in the scriptures; a holy man, who is able to heal the sick – something only the power of God can do. And he tells you that no matter how poor you are, no matter how insignificant you are, no matter how many times you sin because you don’t have the means to live a blameless life according to the rules, that God still loves you. That God forgives you when you mess up. That you are God’s child and all you have to do is believe in that. and then work on being the best person you can be by loving your neighbor as you love yourself. And by doing that you are loving God’s creation, which means that you are loving God.
How mind blowing that must have been for those people: That God loves them. That they are blessed even though they feel downtrodden. That those who are mourning are blessed. That those who have no political power are blessed. That those who want justice are blessed. That those who are compassionate are blessed. That those who are keeping their faith are blessed. That those who work for peace are blessed. And that those who have had injustice inflicted on them are blessed. God loves all those people.
They are God’s children and are worthy in His eyes. They have a place in this world that matters. And they have a place with God in eternity. God loves them.
Think of what that message did. It was counter to every message out there which promoted: You are only worth of a lowly place. You can do nothing to change your circumstances.
Once people believed Jesus’ Good News, they started to form communities around his message. And they weren’t looking to overthrow governments. Jesus himself said: Give to Ceasar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God. What they were looking to do was to support each other in love. To help each other out and to affirm that, even if it’s only in this small community, that they are of worth. The early church was a mission unto itself, helping the members grow and prosper using the power of God’s love.
And yes, there was stumbling and misunderstandings, and they were trying to sail the boat while they were building it. But the core message that each person is of worth; that each person has gifts and graces that they can give to the community; and that God loves them for who they are as individuals, was fire in their hearts and spirits. And if you weren’t a Christian and saw that fire – that certainty of worth in someone; that strength of community that lived in love and support – wouldn’t you want to join that?
You bet you would, and a lot of people did.
When you feel that you are of worth you can do anything. When you feel that you have God’s love and strength behind you, the pettiness of the world doesn’t matter, because you have a mission: To love those around you by helping to make their lives better in your daily routines.
Now in today’s world we are fortunate. We have democracy, the right to choses our leaders and the public policy that we live by. And if it’s not working or is out of date, we can change it. We all of us have access to public education. People bemoan the 79% literacy rate, but the majority of us know how to read and write. And with the internet we have access to a lot of information. I baked a pie the other day and it took me 15 seconds to look up the proper ratio of milk to condensed milk. (We do have to verify our information, but that’s nothing new.) Equal rights – we’re working on it, but they weren’t working on it in Jesus’ day. And what an opportunity it is for us to have the option to find a career that speaks to a passion with in us and reflects out gifts and graces.
Plus, we’ve been raised in a culture that tells you that you are of worth and loved by God. And yet how many of us feel helpless in today’s political and social climate? How many of us feel that it’s all getting away from us and going haywire, and we can’t do anything about it, and it’s going to crash?
The early church lived on the edge of that, and they had less power than we do. But they knew that the best way to push against the helplessness was to have faith that God loved them, and to build positive community that supported each other. And that’s what we can do too.
And yes, the outside world is going to push back. It’s going to tell you that you are stupid and worthless for believing that you can make the world a better place through love. It’s going to tell you that those people aren’t worthy of help. That you are weak for showing so much concern and compassion.
Don’t believe them. God loves you, Jesus loves you, and the Holy Spirit is working with you. And with God’s love and strength you can take your gifts and graces and do anything.
We all have a choice. We can be the one who tears down, who bullies and claims that strength lies in dominance. Or we can be the one who stand against that, and lives and promotes love for their fellow humanity. And that person is a warrior of God, and lives in the joy of creating the Kingdom even if it’s just in their own community.
I challenge you to believe that you are loved by God. I challenge you to find strength in your gifts and graces. I challenge you to be a warrior and bring that self-worth and love out into the world, stand against the negativity, give the love of God to others, and find joy in God’s creation of this wonderful life that he’s given us.
The Lord knows our going out and coming in; He lays his hand on us and we are blessed. So, get out there and be his loving warriors of worth in the world.
The Joy of God’s Love
May 3, 2026 5th Sunday of Easter Communion
Romans 8:31-39 John 3:16-1
Do you know that the ancient Greeks defined nine different types of Love? In the 1st century, when Jesus was talking about the love of God, for 300 years Greek philosophy, thought, and language had permeated the Middle East. And since Greek was the international language of the time, even a simple peasant in Israel would know some Greek words. So, all the people who Jesus talked to about love, would have had an understanding of the various types of love.
Now I’m not going to give you all nine definitions, but I want to point out two things. First, that these definitions include both positive and negative aspects of love. For instance, back then the word MANIA described the obsessive love that is unhealthy for a person to have that can lead to abuse and violence. On the other hand, MERAKI describes creative love, which applys to the devotion that you put into something that you really like to do like an art, or even a sport, job, or craft.
But the most important words and concepts that related to Jesus’ lessons on love are: Agape, unconditional love; Phila, spiritual love; Storge, devoted love of friends and family; and Philautia, self-love. These words reflect the two great commandments: To love God with your whole being, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
God’s love has been described as Agape – that God loves us unconditionally. Now unconditional love doesn’t mean that you can just do anything and get away with it because someone’s love for you is unconditional. It’s not love without consequence. I love my children unconditionally and I will always love them even when they do the wrong thing.
When my son was little, before he understood the concept of money, he took a little car from the neighborhood toy store. I found out when I saw him playing with it. Apparently, his friend, who also didn’t understand money or credit cards, saw his mother buy something in a store without money and he thought she got it for free. Therefore, he thought he could just take a little toy for free and both he and my son each took a car. This was a life lesson for my son. We took the car back to the store, explained to the manager what had happened and apologized; paid for the car; and then my son had to do chores around the house to pay me back the amount that I had paid.
Was I angry and disappointed? Yes, but just a little. Did I understand that he still hadn’t gotten the concept of money? Yes, and we worked on that. Did he have to face consequences? Oh, yeah. I didn’t love the incident, but I never stopped loving him because of that incident. I love him simply for who is: My son, a human being, and a child of God.
That’s how God loves us, with Agape love. He knows we don’t always get it; He knows we mess up. But he loves us anyway. And sometimes when we mess up, we hide away and we don’t think that we’re worthy of love. But there is always forgiveness from God, which gives us the strength to face the consequences when we do mess up.
Because we know that God is on our side, we can face the problems we create as well as the problems that the world creates for us. That is what Paul is talking about. The line With God on our side like this, how can we lose? Is traditionally spoken as: If God is for us who can be against us? It does not mean: Since I believe in God and Jesus, I am right and have the moral high-ground. Paul is talking about our own fallibility and how we cope with it in order to be and become better people who are more loving. If we are more loving then we are more patient, more generous, more forgiving, more compassionate, and more faithful to ourselves, others, and God. And because we have that love from God, we are able to make it through all the hard times that the world dishes out to us.
That’s what agape does for us. But our love for God is also Phila, or spiritual love, the kind of love when you have a strong spiritual relationship with someone. The word implies spiritual connection, trust, the sharing of values, and shared goals and happiness. That’s very much the parameters of faith. We become aware of the grace and presence of God through Christ. Then we realize that we share the values of Christ, and our goal is to grow in our faith and understanding. We trust that the Holy Spirit will lead us in actions of love, and the result is happiness and lasting joy.
The next love is Storge, the devoted love that we have for family and friends. This is directly related to the second commandment: To love our neighbors. Now the word neighbor literally means the person next to you, so that includes your family, and friends, and the people next door, and the person you’re standing online with at the store. Your neighbor is whoever is in contact with you at the moment. But as our faith matures so does our love, and we are able to see that it’s not only our community but the whole world that is our neighbor.
Today we are coming to God’s table to celebrate communion. And I challenge you to think about the fact that all across America, in North and South America, and in the rest of the world, there are other people partaking in this ceremony at the same time we are. We are connected to them through communion and God’s love. The next time you’re in a store take a minute to recognize in your heart the neighbors surrounding you.
And finally, there is the second part of that commandment: To love ourselves. That is Philautia, self-love. And now we circle back to God again, because when we know that we are loved and forgiven by God we can love and forgive ourselves. And we can turn around and love and forgive others.
Now there is a scary bit of scripture in Romans that I want to clarify for you. Paul says: They kill us in cold blood because they hate you. We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
I’m actually not fond of this more modern translation; I prefer the more traditional leading a lamb to slaughter. (It’s not about ducks.) Which is still grim, but Paul is referring to Isaiah 53:7 and it’s meant to refer to the traditional sacrifice of the Passover lamb and Isaiah was also referencing the coming Messiah. Paul is reminding people that Jesus gave his life so that we would not have keep sacrificing ourselves on our own altar of guilt. God wants us to get out of the guilt loop where we spiral down into our own shame when we do something wrong, and we can’t recover and continually feel unworthy and cut off from God. Jesus paid the price so that we don’t have to keep paying it in our hearts and minds. And that is why we are never cut off from God.
As Paul says: Absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
None of this love stands alone. The great thing about it is that it all feeds off of one another and becomes stronger the more we give it, receive it, practice it, and live in it. When we live in love, we gain happiness. And happiness is like a savings account. The more you put into it the bigger it gets and gradually grows into joy that is everlasting. And then one day you have such a store of joy that even in dark times you can find a measure of comfort and hope, because you know you are living in God’s love.
This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. May we be blessed in God’s love always.