“Learning From and with Our God of Unconditional Love (Together, in a Variety of Ways)”
“Saying No to False Options for Love” – Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a, Luke 4:14-21
Epiphany is the radical inbreaking of God’s love into human experience in the birth of Jesus. The baptism of Jesus is the radical inbreaking of God’s love into human experience in that Jesus represented every human being past, present, and future.
The radical inbreaking of God’s love into human experience continues today. Each day, the radical inbreaking of God’s love impacts your life. Those moments of revelation when you realize that God is moving in your life confirms God’s mission in and through you for the sake of others. We are in this thing called the Christian life, together. Listen to Henri Nouwen connect the dots regarding our connection to one another:
Living with … handicapped people, I realize how success-oriented I am. Living with men and women who cannot compete in the worlds of business, industry, sports, or academics but for whom dressing, walking, speaking, eating, drinking, and playing are the main “accomplishments,” is extremely frustrating for me. I may have come to the theoretical insight that being is more important than doing, but when asked to just be with people who can do very little, I realize how far I am from the realization of that insight. … Some of us might be productive and others not, but we are all called to bear fruit: fruitfulness is a true quality of love.[1]
A life that bears fruit is one where being present with another demonstrates Jesus living his life through you…. the radical inbreaking of God’s love is happening through you for the sake of another.
The scribe Ezra, in the book of Nehemiah, points us to the importance of the Law. The Law, the Ten Commandments, restrains evil, convicts of sin, and aids our understanding of God’s will.
Paul writes in a third lectionary text for today, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” To know that all who profess faith in Jesus Christ, regardless of their differences, are included in the family of God, requires us to trust that God loves all unconditionally. We are one body connected to one another to advance the kingdom of God.
Jesus states in Luke 4:18, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” One day, Jesus went to the synagogue. There, he stood up and read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. It was the custom to read the scripture in the synagogue. It was the custom of the people to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath and to hear the Word of God read. It was the custom of the people to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath and be with one another in the presence of God. But Jesus challenged custom with one short sentence, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” God became personal. Jesus brought good news to the poor, proclaimed release to the captives, restored sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free and proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor.
God’s love marks the beginning of creation and the consummation of the new heaven and earth. God’s unconditional love leads us to transformational daily living every day until the new heaven and earth is consummated at the Second Coming of Jesus. The radical inbreaking of God’s unconditional love compels Christians to remember, tell, and live the way of Jesus by being just, kind, and humble. The Confession of 1967 states this about the importance of unity and Jesus’ mission,
The life, death, resurrection, and promised coming of Jesus Christ have set the pattern for the church’s mission. His life as man involves the church in the common life of humanity. His service to humanity commits the church to work for every form of human well-being. The church is called to bring all people to receive and uphold one another as persons in all relationships of life: in employment, housing, education, leisure, marriage, family, church, and the exercise of political rights…[2]
Humility, kindness, and justice are at the core of the Gospel.
Saying no to false options for love is a daily exercise. Finding love in being successful in my career is short-lived and a dead end. Struggling to experience love when a long-standing friendship goes south is troubling. But our knowing and experiencing love does not begin and end with that failing friendship. Learning that our experience of being loved begins and ends with God is a gamechanger.
In a sermon entitled The Beauty of Biblical Justice, pastor Timothy Keller defines the biblical concept of shalom as universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight. Keller states, “God created the world to be a fabric, for everything to be woven together and interdependent.”
Keller illustrates his point with the following picture of biblical shalom: “If I threw a thousand threads onto the table, they wouldn’t be a fabric. They’d just be threads lying on top of each other. Threads become a fabric when each one has been woven over, under, around, and through every other one. The more interdependent they are, the more beautiful they are. The more interwoven they are, the stronger and warmer they are. God made the world with billions of entities, but he didn’t make them to be an aggregation. Rather, he made them to be in a beautiful, harmonious, knitted, webbed, interdependent relationship with one another.”
Then he offers a concrete example for the need to practice the Bible’s call to shalom. In large cities around the world, children are growing up as functional illiterates—largely due to school and family situations. By the time they become teenagers, they can’t read or write. According to Keller, at that point, they’re often locked into poverty for the rest of their lives. Some people pin this problem on unjust social structures; others blame the breakdown of the family. But nobody says it’s the kids’ fault.
So Keller concludes, “Nobody says that 7-year-olds need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. And yet, a child born into my family has a 300 to 400 times greater chance for economic or social flourishing than the kids in those neighborhoods. That’s just one example of the way in which the fabric of the world—the shalom of this world—has been broken … . It’s not enough to do individual charity; you have to address [larger social issues].”[3]
Live Spirit led lives. Exercise the spiritual gifts. Bear the fruit of the Spirit. Say yes to the true option of love, Jesus Christ. Demonstrate the good news of Jesus to the marginalized, hurting, and hopeless. More people will join the journey of living a better life now as well as inherit eternal life.[4] Amen!
This sermon was preached on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, 26 January 2025 by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh in the Great Room and Sanctuary at Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas
Copyright 2025 – Steven M. Marsh – All rights reserved.
[1]Henri J.M. Nouwen in Lifesigns. Christianity Today, Vol. 35, no. 12.
[2]Book of Confessions, The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Part 1(Louisville, Kentucky: The Office of the General Assembly, 2014), sections 9.32, 43-45 on pages 292-294.
[3]Taken from Timothy Keller, “The Beauty of Biblical Justice,” byFaith, (October 2010).
[4]In preparation of this sermon, I have benefited from the thinking of Glen Bell, Melissa Browning, Khalia J. Williams, Shannon Craigo-Snell, Cynthia A. Jarvis, Warren Carter and Blair R. Monie in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby and Carolyn J. Sharp, editors, Connections, Year C, Volume 1 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 192-194, 194-195, 196-198, 199-202, 202-203, 204-206, and 206-207.
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JAN