Do you like country music?
Are you a country music fan?? Back in the 90s when grunge ruled the rock and roll radio stations, I too, was a country fan.? Mary Chapin Carpenter was one of my favorites along with Colin Raye and Allison Krauss.? What have been some of your favorite country songs? ? ?There is the old joke about country music.? If you play a country song backwards, ?you get your truck back, your dog back, your job back, and your wife back. We laugh, but years ago, Chicago Lutheran pastor Bruce Cole used to be a DJ on a country and western station. His call-in show greeted every caller with these words: Are You Crying, Laughing, Loving or Leaving? Is it any wonder country and western music has become our nation?s #1 music with songs like Here?s A Quarter?Call Someone Who Cares?
What makes country music so popular with such a broad cross section of people?? One of the reasons that country music is so popular, is that it deals with real issues.? We all have difficulties in our relationships.? We have all had our hearts broken by someone we love.? We have all been disappointed.? We have all been happy as a NASCAR fan on race day.? We all have times when we feel lower than low.? Country music captures all those emotions, the good ones and the bad ones.? I have also noticed that often, country music has a cynical bent to it. Country music is infamous for the songs they have about substance abuse, rain, cheating, and death.?Who else sings about stuff like this?? I remember Barbra Mandrel?s song, ?Sleeping Single in a Double Bed.?? And today we have Carrie Underwood reminding men why they should remain faithful with her song, ?Before He Cheats.?
That?s why we like country music.? We have a touch of cynical in us.? Is that how we are created to be though?? In his letter to the church at Philippi, Paul encouraged the church to think on things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, and praiseworthy (see Philippians 4:8). But our cynical culture makes it hard to focus on these things, doesn?t it? All we have to do is open our email or our Facebook page or watch TV to see tons of cynical and sometimes just negative and hateful things.? That is one reason it has been so nice this week thinking about the positive things in life.? Last week we named things that we love about this church.? This week, I invited you to think about people who have made an impact on your spiritual life.? We got to write about people that we love and why they matter to us.? This week we got to do the opposite of the culture.? We can focus on those that we love and the impact they have made in a positive way in our lives.? There are two short scripture verses that go perfectly along with loving and appreciating those people in our lives. From the great Shema of the Torah in Deuteronomy to the teaching of Jesus found in John 13, this focus on loving relationship is at the root of the scriptural values of our faith.
Deuteronomy 6:4-6. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. (NRSV)
John 13:34-35. ?I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other.? (CEB)
In the Christian faith, we pay attention to the teaching of the Shema in the context of the teaching of Jesus. One of the ways we express our love for God is through our love for one another. This is a clear expectation of our faith. Do you find this difficult sometimes?? Loving other people isn?t always easy.? Sometimes people we love do things that drive us absolutely crazy. ?They push our buttons.? They know just how to hurt us.? What are some obstacles you have seen or experienced to a healthy or loving relationship?
The Bible tells us much about love and relationships.? Our two scripture lessons for this morning are a good reminder of what a loving relationship is supposed to be like.? Love God with all your heart, soul, and strength.? And then love one another.? In fact Jesus says that people should know we are Christians by the way we love one another.? Let?s look for a moment at these scriptures and figure out how they can apply to us this morning in Red Springs in 2012.
The Jews say that the Ten Commandments and the Shema should be taught to children from their earliest days and fixed on the door of every house.? You can tell a Jewish person, at least one who practices Judaism, when they have a mezuzah on their doorpost.? [Pass one around.]? Orthodox Jewish men wear the phylacteries or small leather pouches with the scripture written on small scrolls on their foreheads.? That would certainly be a way to always remember God?s word and how to act in the world.? That is certainly a way to remember to put our words of scripture into action.
In fact, faithful Jews recite this exact passage from Deuteronomy every day.? Yes, every day, multiple times a day and at the very least first thing in the morning and last thing at night.? Israel is told to HEAR and then to LOVE God.? This is a defining relationship for Jews and for us as Christians.? God delivered us from slavery.? God loves us before we even know God.? God saved us from ourselves.? As a result, we are to love God and love our neighbor.? This isn?t the feeling love that my family has for frozen yogurt.? It isn?t the love we feel for our first boyfriend or girlfriend.? It isn?t the love we have for our favorite ball team.? This love is total commitment.? It?s like that quote from Talladega Nights:? The Legend of Ricky Bobby.? ?If you?re not first, you?re last.?? If God isn?t first, then you?re last.? If you don?t love God and God only, then you aren?t following God?s commands properly.? If money is more important than God, if our relationships are more important than God, if our job is more important than God, then it is time to consider what is getting between us and God.? God has been loyal to us, so therefore, we must be loyal to God with our whole person. In the original Hebrew, we are to love God with our me?od or ?muchness? with our whole heart, mind, and soul.?? That is why Jewish people say this prayer every morning and every evening and have these words written and stuck on the doorpost of their houses.? A Jewish writer explains it this way, ?Thus the Shema is the last greeting and admonition to those who leave the house; may their lives be guided by its ideals. The Shema is man?s first welcome home; may he place his home, and his thoughts and actions within it, under the instruction of God?s Torah.?? We are invited to love God with all we?ve got.
We have all probably had people in our lives that have been reminders of God?s presence or pointed us closer to God?s presence.? We have had people in our lives that help us love God with all we?ve got.? Who has been that person for you and why?? Who has made an impact on your spiritual journey?? [Input]
These people have helped us love God and love our neighbor.? That is what Jesus is talking about in our Gospel scripture.? When Jesus speaks these words, he had just washed his Disciple?s feet.? What an eye opening experience that must have been for the Disciples.? Their leader stooped as low as a servant and touched their dirty, stinky, nasty feet.? Then this servant leader commands them to love one another.? No wonder it is written down for us to read today.
This instruction to love echoes the words of the schema and Torah.? What is new in what he says is that the command to love comes from the life of Jesus.? Jesus? followers are asked to enter into the love the God and Jesus share.? That radical love is what will set them apart and make others notice them.? Keeping this commandment will be a mark of discipleship because it is an outward and visible sign of the Disciples? love for Jesus.? Love is a reciprocal thing.? Jesus loves the Disciples and the Disciples love him back.? Jesus loves us and we love him back.? Jesus showed just how much he loved us by sacrificing himself for our sins.? What can we do in response??? We cannot hang on a cross.? We cannot usually lay our life down for a friend.? However, we can love one another.? If we had to leap tall buildings in a single bound, it might be easier some times.? To be the Church in the world, we have to love one another like God loves us.? We have to live lives full of extravagant generosity.
I read this snippet in a book this week that talks about how we live into the extravagant generosity of loving one another.? ?Every sanctuary and chapel in which we have worshiped, every church organ that has lifted our spirits, every pew where we have sat, every Communion rail where we have knelt, every hymnal from which we have sung, every praise band that has touched our hearts, every church classroom where we have gathered with our friends, every church kitchen that has prepared our meals, every church van that has taken us to camp, every church camp cabin where we have slept?they are all are the fruit of someone?s Extravagant Generosity.
We have been the recipients of grace upon grace. We are the heirs, the beneficiaries of those who came before us who were touched by the generosity of Christ enough to give graciously so that we could experience the truth of Christ for ourselves. We owe the same to generations to come. We have worshiped in sanctuaries that we did not build, so to us falls the privilege of building sanctuaries where we shall never worship.? (pp. 41?42).? How we treat this space matters.? How we bring others along in the faith matters.? How often we bring our children to church and to Sunday school matters.? Who we impact for Christ matters.
Studies show that the most people can name between five and eight people who?ve made an impact on their lives ? people who came into their lives at different times and influenced them in profound ways.? Mentoring isn?t just a one-on-one relationship.? We create webs of mentors across our lifetimes and bring others we mentor into the web or relationships.
We need to have relationships like these in our church and provide opportunities for people of all ages to interact and form teaching and mentoring relationships.?This week we celebrated people we love in the church. We have named the people who have made a spiritual impact on our lives. How can we express our appreciation of these gifts of grace this week? How can we pass that grace onto someone else?? How can we let these people know that what they did mattered to us?? And if that person is already in heaven, let?s think about who we could impact in a similar way.? Who could you mentor?? Find a way this week to say I love you to your family members as well. ??This church does not have to live like a country song.? We don?t have to focus on the negative and we don?t have to have a trail of broken relationships in our lives.? We have a relationship with Jesus Christ, so we base all our other relationships on that relationship of love and extravagant generosity.
Next time we get together, we will explore what we would most like to see happen in our church in the coming year. I invite you to consider what your greatest hope and best vision for God work through this congregation could be.? Where is God calling us to be living into this extravagant love He has for us?
Source: http://trinityredsprings.org/2012/10/18/the-art-of-love-relationships-are-matters-of-the-heart/
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