Fifth Sunday of Easter (Liberalism Strikes!! :-0)

Hi everyone! Now that I've grabbed your attention, I'll explain what I mean by looking at my topic for Sunday. The Scriptures are Acts 11:1-18, Revelation 21:1-6, and John 13:31-35. The sermon title is "All Things New." The concept in these passages is the idea that God, as He declares in Revelation 21:5, "Behold I am making all things new!"

First, in John, we find Jesus saying that He is the true revelation of the Father’s glory. The Glory of God is the nature and being of God. God is, as John tells us elsewhere, love. The idea is that God has revealed his love and what it means to love to us in Jesus Christ. Because of this, we ought to love one another. This is, as Jesus says, "A new command." We are to love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a propitiation and sacrifice before God.

And loving others often requires us to love people that we don't want to love because we don't find them worthy. But no one is unworthy. In Acts, we see this plainly. Here, we see that salvation has now been opened to all people. This was new for the disciples and apostles of Jerusalem, who felt that people could only become followers of Christ by submitting to the law of Moses and being circumcised. Those who had not been circumcised or followed the law were considered unclean. But Jesus appears to Peter in a vision, and Christ says to him, ""Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." (Acts 10:14). Therefore, Peter felt justified in associating with Gentiles, and baptizing Cornelius. And therefore he justifies his actions to the rest of the Apostles, who declare that, "...to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life." This statement opens up Christianity not only to those who by circumcision are part of the covenant, but to all who people who by faith confess Christ as Lord and believe in His saving work on the cross and resurrection.

The idea here is one which cries for unity and brotherhood within the church. There are no more dividing walls. The job of Christians is to tear down the walls which divide us and love one another with a new kind of love and charity for one another. After all, what does it mean to love unconditionally? How can we love one another better? The idea here is not thinking more highly of yourself than you ought, and putting others before yourself in thought, word, and deed. (Philippians 1:27-2:5 reference.)

Now, I have to admit that had I heard such a sermon before the last two years, I would have been suspect of a call for the church to uphold social justice and peace in our world (hence my "liberalism" comment). Some Christians focus far too heavily on this aspect of our mission in Christ, and this has caused problems. After all, many of such persuasion will ignore evangelism, or they will confuse the modern notion of tolerance with love. But in a way, they have something to contribute to our thinking. But we cannot disregard the call we’ve been given in Christ to impact the world with the Gospel of Christ, to proclaim freedom for the captive, sight for the blind and life to the one living in death. But if we do not have the love of Christ in us, we have no motivation to do this. We need to uphold Jesus’ command to love one another, and in doing so, we humble ourselves, and tear down the walls of class, race, culture, and sex. As Paul says in Galatians 3:28, "In Christ there is no Jew nor Greek, Slave nor Free, Male nor Female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus

This is only a taste of what is to come: if you are interested in hearing how it all fits together, come to Bessemer at 10:45 on Sunday!