Series: “Jesus’ Message: You Are The Conduit”
“Being A Restorer of Relationships”
Acts 10:44-48
John 15:9-17
In the late 1940s, Charles Templeton was a close friend and preaching associate of Billy Graham. Over time, however, Templeton developed intellectual doubts. He questioned the authority of Scripture and other core Christian beliefs. Templeton abandoned his faith. He resigned as a preaching associate of Billy Graham and became a novelist and news commentator. Templeton also wrote a critique of the Christian faith, Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith.
Lee Strobel interviewed Charles Templeton for his book, The Case for Faith. Templeton was 83. In the interview, Templeton revealed some of the reasons he left the faith: “I started considering the plagues that sweep across parts of the planet and indiscriminately kill, more often than not, painfully, all kinds of people, the ordinary, the decent, and the rotten…it is not possible for an intelligent person to believe that there is a deity who loves.” Strobel then asked Templeton about Jesus. Templeton remarked: “He was the greatest human being who has ever lived. He was a moral genius. His ethical sense was unique… Everything good I know, everything decent I know, everything pure I know, I learned from Jesus. He is the most important human being who has ever existed. And if I may put it this way, I miss Him.”[1]
Acts 10:44-48 and John 15:9-17 clearly announce that Jesus lays down his life for the benefit of everyone, every day. Jesus shows us the way to participate with him in restoring broken and hurtful relationships. Jesus encourages us to live the resurrection belief that by demonstrating love and hospitality to one another and others, polarized relationships heal one life at a time.
In Acts 10:44-48, the Holy Spirit interrupted Peter’s preaching. The message was going to break out of its singular focus on the Jews and go to the Gentile world. Noel Leo Erskine writes, “The new revelation made possible by the inbreaking of the Holy One was clear: The Gentile believers belong as much to the household of God as Jewish believers. Gentiles do not have to become Jews. God accepts them as they are.”[2] Peter was confronted with his exclusivism. That is, Peter’s bias was wanting to reach the Jews, and if he had to, make Gentiles as much like faithful Jews as possible, by enforcing specific Jewish traditions. By the power of the Holy Spirit, God comes to us over and over again as Emmanuel, God with us. We participate with Jesus in salvation, literally and spiritually, in the lives of others.
John 15:9-17 focuses our attention on the reality of the Holy Spirit empowering each follower of Jesus to love one another and others with a love that is continuous and unconditional. If we keep Jesus’ commandments then we will do as Jesus did. The Gospel of John depicts an alternative world, one that is rooted in an all-inclusive love which transcends anti-Judaism. Jesus’ call to love one another is not exclusive to the community of faith. No! The call to love is to love beyond the community reaching those outside it. Therein lies the significance of the impact of our lives on others.
Some traditions are helpful. Others are not. Gathering family together for birthdays and other celebrations is important. Hazing in fraternities not so much. Tailgate parties for our favorite college football games is a favorable tradition. But deciding who is the “right kind” of person for the group not so much. We need to break out of traditions which exclude and have eyes for “the other,” those who at first glance, just don’t fit in. In Peter’s case, as one biblical commentator notes, “The Holy Spirit was working a powerful transformation among the early Christians. Their perspective of who was “in” and who was “out” was being changed not by their own doing, but by the intervention of the Holy Spirit. The boundaries of the ‘inner circle’ kept widening to the point that the assumed boundaries were no longer legitimate.”[3] Friends, being the presence of Christ, being the church takes us beyond our walls, loving all.[4]
God is our teacher. We are God’s pupils. We are “wired” to love God and others. Brennan Manning in The Importance of Being Foolish: How to Think Like Jesus writes,
Compassion for others and joy over their repentance reign in the mind of Christ…Jesus’s gentleness with sinners flowed from his ability to read their hearts and to detect the sincerity and essential goodness there. Behind people’s grumpiest poses or most puzzling defense mechanisms, behind their dignified airs, coarseness, or sneers, behind their silence or their curses, Jesus saw a little child who had ceased growing because those around him had ceased believing in him.[5]
Let’s love one another and others as God loves. As we are being good neighbors, evidence of God at work overflows. You are the conduit for Jesus’ love, in your words and deeds, to restore broken and hurtful relationships. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia, Amen. Alleluia, Amen.
This sermon was preached on the Sixth Sunday of Easter, 5 May 2024 by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh
in the Sanctuary at Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas
Copyright © 2024
Steven M. Marsh
All rights reserved.
[1]Much in this paragraph has been adapted from Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000), 7-23.
[2]Noel Leo Erskine in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 2, 482.
[3]Jeffrey D. Peterson-Davis in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 2, 480.
[4]In the four paragraphs of textual analysis above, I have benefited from the thinking of Jin Young Choi, Mihee Kim-Kort, Rhodora E. Beaton, Steven J. Kraftchick, Lindsey S. Jodrey, Deirdre Good, and Rodger Y. Nishioka in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby and Carolyn J. Sharp, editors, Connections, Year B, Volume 2 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2020), 265-267, 267-269, 270-271, 272-273, 274-275, 276-277, and 278-279.
[5]Brennan Manning, The Importance of Being Foolish: How to Think Like Jesus (New York City, New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 100-101.
ShareJUN