Community Development Report ~ March 2011

Rhubarb pie ~ good anyway you slice it!

Following is a report of what happened in the Community Development Ministry in March:

Website: A church website has been updated and will "go-live" on April 2nd. Many thanks to the Carroll County Literacy Council for technical assistance. Please visit the website here: http://www.fccberryville.org/

FCC has a new e-mail address which we ask you to contact so that we can update our e-mail directory. The address is: fccberryvillear@gmail.com

The Carroll County Literacy Council has been in the Annex for 1 month and report happiness with the space and surroundings. We will continue to improve the space--and building--by exterior painting and updating as we can.

Our new Children's Garden is nearing completion and it will be ready for planting on or about the first of may. Some planting has already happened in the Community Garden. In March, $800.00 in cash, lumber, equipment rental, and concrete has been donated for these efforts. On a whimsical note, an old rhubarb plant that we abandoned after last year has popped up in the last few days and is going strong. Maybe we'll have some rhubard pie this year.

We continue to provide volunteer staff at Loaves and Fishes every Friday from 10 AM to 2 PM. If you have the time, please consider volunteering and give our every so wonderful reliable volunteers a break.

The church and surrounding surrounding buildings are now all WI-FI ready and allow members and visitors access the Internet freely. In other words, "we are wireless" and very up to date.

MANY thanks to everyone for your help and support.

The Righteousness That Comes by Faith: The Faith of Enoch and Noah

John 3:16-21; Hebrews 11:5-7;

Genesis 5:21-24; 6:5-9, 9:8-17

Make what you will of the long lives reported for the pre-flood line from Adam and Eve down to Noah and his wife. Of the ten names in that list, all the reported ages are far beyond our experience and expectation for human life. The Bible does not explain why this is so, and we have no other data, so all our attempts to use human reason either to defend or to explain away these reports are simply speculative. Enoch lived on earth about five times the average modern life span, but when compared to his immediate family line only 47% of the next shortest lifespan in this list and only 37% of the longest, his son Methuselah. Why did Enoch get the short end of the lifespan stick? Had he done something very bad? Not so. Beyond the fact that Enoch fathered Methuselah and other sons and daughters, we know one other thing about him. The text says, “Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.” It wasn’t punishment; it was blessing. Presumably, it was something similar to what later happened to Elijah when he was escorted alive out of this life by chariots of holy fire.

Enoch was transferred from the realm that is visible to us into what is from our perspective the invisible realm of God…without first dying. This is not the sort of thing that God does for everyone who pleases him. Usually it is preferable that we live out our calling on earth and demonstrate how to live, to suffer, and to die with obedient, vulnerable, vibrant, creation-affirming faith before we enter eternal glory. Enoch’s transfer is a sign and an assurance to us of what pleases God, and what pleases God is a life spent walking with God. The Letter to the Hebrews gives the best explanation of the purpose of this sign: 11:5 By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

What the text says is that, if we would draw near to walk in close fellowship with God, we must have faith, believing and trusting that God exists and that, in some extraordinarily valuable way, God rewards those who seek him. Sometimes the reward is in this life, sometimes in the next life, sometimes the reward is a part of ordinary experience. Sometimes it can only be called miraculous, but what is important, either way, is that it comes from the hand of the sovereign God. To be sure, God may work to refine our understanding of what it means to be rewarded, blessed, and favored by God. Early in our walk of faith we may understand blessing too much in terms of the rewards that this world encourages us to seek: health, wealth, education, influence, pleasure, surface happiness, and we may be sometimes pleased to get what we want, but often disappointed when what we are expecting simply does not happen. The lack of the reward we had in mind does not mean that a reward is not coming, or even that it has not already come unnoticed by us. As we mature in faith, we are more likely to see blessing in the deep satisfactions of knowing that we know that we know that we serve a God who is holy, gracious, faithful, and eternally sovereign. The sooner we learn this, the sooner our satisfactions grow rich and deep. Jesus said, and I liberally paraphrase, “Seek first the prevailing of God’s will and righteousness, and all the rest of the stuff will fall satisfactorily into its proper place.”

What Jesus is saying is that we must by faith prioritize seeking God and his righteous will. This means that our number one goal in life must become to know who God is, what God wants, and what God is doing around us right now. If knowing God is really our number one goal, that means that we will spend time reading God’s word in search of deeper understanding of what God has revealed of his nature and purposes. If knowing God is really our number one goal, then we will frequently spend time in prayer listening for what God would speak to our hearts and minds through the Holy Spirit. If knowing God is really our number one goal, then we will find time to join in what God is doing around us so that we can know him better through serving him, experiencing God in action. Indeed, if we want to know God, we will practice the spiritual disciplines in which God shows up; our way of describing those is the 9 Ways.

There is a corollary to prioritizing knowing God, and that is that we must want God to know us as we really are so that God can work within us to make us more what he has planned for us to become. Of course, God already does know everything about us, but we must want that to be so. We must stop fooling ourselves into thinking that we can hide anything about ourselves from God. At most, we can fool ourselves into thinking we have hidden it from God. Really seeking God means letting go of foolish games of spiritual hide and seek, and letting ourselves (as we actually are) be found by God (as God actually is). God rewards that choice in deep and rich ways. Remember, whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Besides Enoch, we get especially favorable comment on one other of the listed ten. In Genesis 6:8-9, it says, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord….Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” Noah found favor with the Lord and stood out in his generation as righteous and blameless, because, like Enoch, he walked with God. But he did not get transferred out of this life. Instead, he was assigned to oversee the repopulation of the earth after God’s sweeping judgment on its sin.

Genesis 6:5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. 9 … Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. You know the story. God commanded Noah to build an ark. Noah followed God’s specifications and built the ark, supplying it and filling it as instructed, so that male and female of each kind of living creature of land and air, along with Noah and his family, were all preserved. The rains came, the waters rose, the world was flooded until there was no land life outside the ark, the rains stopped, the floods receded, and at last life was sustainable again outside the ark, and so the Lord sent the occupants of the ark out to repopulate the earth. There is, of course, more to the story than that, and every part has its importance, but today I want to skip to the ending.

Genesis 9:12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

By binding himself to this covenant, God guaranteed that there would never again be a destructive judgment as encompassing as in the time of Noah. Despite this covenant, God remained holy, not giving up one piece of his plans of perfection for his human children, and yet at the same time knew that his human children would slide back into sin. The rainbow covenant was extremely costly for God. It meant that he would have to take upon himself the cost of redeeming sinful humanity. In the fullness of time, the rainbow would require the cross of his perfect Son Jesus Christ through which God would offer to his wayward children not just forgiveness, but covering with righteousness and gradual transformation into actual righteousness, all that without yielding one iota of his holiness. When you see a rainbow, imagine not the pot of gold at its end, but envision the infinitely more costly and glorious cross of Christ, emblazoned in glory at the peak of that rainbow.

As the first recipient of the rainbow promise, Noah had an important part to play in the drama. Hebrews 11 sees it this way. Hebrews 11: 7 By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

By obeying God’s instructions for preserving life and faith in the face of righteous judgment, Noah demonstrated a faith that was in marked contrast to that of the perishing world. In this way, he condemned the world for its lack of faith and was himself counted righteous by means of Christ’s much later death on the cross.

When it says that Noah condemned the world, I am not saying that he went around giving angry denouncement speeches. I am saying that the positive counterexample of his faith showed the kind of faith that was open to everyone.

Noah was not a perfect person. You don’t have to be yet perfected to be by God’s grace through your faith on the path to perfection. Grace and faith will get you to the goal if you will hold on, keep getting up, dusting yourself off, and listening to and obeying God yet again. If you are living your life in Jesus Christ, that kind of faith turns to righteousness and eternal life.

Our texts emphasize walking with God, faith, righteousness, and obedience. Perhaps it is time for me to emphasize also that these are possible only by the grace of God. We enter and persevere in the journey to salvation only by the grace of God.

How does God’s grace make this possible? First of all, salvation is only through Jesus Christ, even for Enoch and Noah and the other saints of the Old Testament. They did not know Jesus, but he provided the way for imperfect people of faith to be counted in. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one-of-a-kind Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Jesus with his costly perfect righteousness agrees to stand in for us, to set the balances right, so that our faith can be counted as righteousness, and so that we can enter eternity without wrecking the perfect plans of God. Without Jesus, that cannot happen and so salvation would never get started.

Second of all, God sends his Holy Spirit to those who believe in Jesus, and the Holy Spirit gives us new birth and gradual metamorphosis, changing us degree by degree toward the goal. It is only those who are on this journey who will persevere in their faith. And this journey would not be possible without the Spirit of God graciously living within us.

So, from beginning to end, our salvation is the gracious work of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but to receive God’s gracious saving work, we must gratefully walk with God in faith and obedience. When we read them carefully, the New Testament writers from Paul to James are in total agreement on this. It is time for us understand that the gracious signs of the rainbow and the cross call for us, like Enoch and Noah, to walk daily with God. One more time, remember, whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. So seek him, today and every day. Walk with God.

The Blood Still Speaks: the Faith of Abel

Lenten Theme: Holding Resurrection Faith While Bearing the Cross

John 6:35-40; 53-58; Hebrews 11:4; 12:22-24; Genesis 4:1-16, 25-26

4:1 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” 2 And again, she bore his brother Abel. Eve was proud of the accomplishment of delivering her firstborn son, naming him Cain to indicate, “I have gotten a man, uh, hmmm, oh yeah, with the help of the Lord, of course.” I assume that her second son is named with more humility, with more awareness of his fragility. His name Abel (Habal in Hebrew) means breath or vapor. It is the same word used in Ecclesiastes to mean vanity or emptiness or meaninglessness, but it can also refer to fragility of life, in this case a prophetic name.

Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

For reasons we are not directly told, the Lord preferred Abel’s offering. Contrary to many explanations you may have read or heard, there is no hint in this story that God prefers ranching to farming or that thank-offerings had to have blood in them. All the text tells us is that Cain did not do well, perhaps because he did not give his best as Abel did, butt hat is more than we are clearly told. . 1 John 3:12 tells us that Cain murdered his brother because his own deeds were already evil. He had already departed from letting God shape his heart when the Lord turned down his offering. Cain’s resentment suggests that he was calculating that, if he met the basic requirements of the offering, God was obligated to reward him. His anger is that his calculations did not work out. Calculations never do work out when we think that we are obligating God to please us.

It seemed to Cain that God unfairly favored Abel; Cain was jealous. James tells us that bitter jealousy and selfish ambition are earthly, unspiritual, demonic, and that they lead to frustration, quarreling, and murder. Apparently, this was true of the first two descendants of Adam and Eve born outside of Eden, for that is just what happens:

8 Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?” 10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. 12 When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” 13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14 Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” 15 Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. 16 Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.…

Let us note again the following words of the Lord to Cain: “The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.” One might say that Abel was the world’s first martyr of the faith. His innocent blood ran into the ground and from there cried out to God for righteousness, justice, and vindication, just as the prayers of martyrs in heaven cry out for justice and vindication to this day. Note Revelation 6:9-11 where John reports his vision into the heavenly throne room as follows: I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. 10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” 11 Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been. It is not up to us to take vengeance. When the number of faithful martyrs reaches a predetermined point, the One who says, “Vengeance is mine,” the Sovereign Lord of the universe, will act in the name of justice. We may rest in confidence that Justice will ultimately prevail. The voice of Abel and all his spiritual heirs who have been martyred for their faith and righteousness will be answered. Vindication will come.

In the meantime, life goes on. 25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” 26 To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.

When Cain killed Abel, it was as though Adam and Eve lost both their sons, one murdered, the other a fugitive murderer. They had a third son whose name was Seth, meaning “He appointed.” Eve explained, “God has appointed for me another offspring.” Seth was more than just another offspring. He was the one whose lineage led down through Enosh (at which time worship of the Lord began to be observed) to Noah and from there to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, also known as Israel, to the twelve sons of Israel, including Judah from whom in time sprang the royal line of David, leading on down to Jesus, who had no physical offspring, but of whom all who gather in his name, today and through all history, are the spiritual offspring. Seth, who was appointed to keep the path open to the future that God had planned, kept the path open until the time when another voice would speak out of martyr’s blood a different and better message than that of Abel’s blood. It is not that Abel did anything wrong. It is not that the cry of his blood will not be answered, for, as we have seen, it will be answered. For further confirmation that the cry is heard and answered by God, we turn to Hebrews 11:4, “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.”

The cry of Abel’s blood will be answered. But in the very next chapter of Hebrews, in 12:22-24 we read, “22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

When the text says, “You have come to Mount Zion,” this is addressed to Christian worshipers who read this text. How have we come to Mount Zion? Is that not where the Jerusalem temple was? It is no longer there. But the author of the Letter to the Hebrews is aware that through Jesus we have spiritual access to the heavenly New Jerusalem and to the glorious worship there. That is the Mount Zion to which we have come this morning. Today, as we worship God, we worship with the angels of heaven and with the human saints of all the ages. The writer describes the saints as the “firstborn,” that is, those who are baptized into union with Jesus, the firstborn Son of God, the heir of God’s kingdom. We also, who are enrolled on the pages of the book of life, are counted as firstborn heirs of the reign of God. It is explained that those who have been counted as righteous through Christ will there be made perfect. We come into this new position through the blood of Jesus, and it is this blood that speaks a better word than mere justice and vindication. The blood of Jesus speaks the word of total transformation, or rebirth brought to completion in perfection. We are not yet there in our bodily lives, but as we worship we are connected to the throne from where God and the Lamb reign and determine what will be, and the voice of the blood of the Lamb will bring us beyond righteousness, justice, and vindication, toward our ultimate fulfillment as royal children of a loving and sovereign God.

Hebrews also tells us that it is through us who are in Christ that Abel’s anticipatory faith is counted as sufficient. When the writer completes his long describing of the faithful of the Old Testament, a listing that began with Abel, he has a word of hope for this cloud of Old Testament witnesses. They did not receive perfection through their faith until Jesus had completed his work. They rested in blessing until they could receive their perfection along with the faithful in Christ, along with us. The writer says, “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” It implies strongly that, with us, they too will be made perfect.

Now don’t ask me to explain the timetable of that. You and I are still in the earthly, linear time frame. Heaven, and the new heaven and new earth that will be, are in the eternal time frame. The two time frames are not in one-to-one correspondence. It is simply beyond the capacity of our poor limited brains to fathom how our human time frame links up with the eternal time frame. But we do not have to fathom it. We just have to trust that it all comes right in the end. We may be in the solemn season, Lent, but the truth, that all we have to understand is that it all comes right in the end through faith in Jesus Christ, is even now worth an “Alleluia!”

The cry of Abel’s blood will be answered. And the cry of Jesus’ blood will win the full victory in the end. Abel’s blood cries for justice, Jesus’ blood cries for redemption and for perfect fulfillment of all that can be purified. In the end, it will all come together just as it should. Alleluia!

We live in a broken world. We do not have to look far to see signs of its brokenness. We know of enough brokenness in our own daily lives that we do not even have to watch the news to see it. Indeed, many of us might be better off not feeding ever more images of darkness and outrage into our minds. We might do better to spend more time considering what Jesus has accomplished and letting Jesus determine our outlook on life.

In this world there are crosses. There is, both literally and figuratively, always more righteous blood being spilled. Sometimes that spilling of righteous blood touches us personally, especially as we seek to live as representatives of Jesus. Jesus does not call us to hide our eyes, but neither does he call us to become angry avengers. He calls us to take up our crosses and to live as vulnerable representatives of his better voice, the voice of healing and delivering and reconciling and redeeming, the voice of new beginnings, the voice of wholeness, the voice of steadfast love, the voice of faith and hope, the voice of God.

That is not an easy voice to raise in this world of crosses, but we are not only bearers of crosses, we are also holders of the good news of resurrection. A victory is coming. It has already been secured and guaranteed by Jesus, crucified, risen, and exalted. Even as we cry out for justice, let us even more clearly celebrate our Lord’s victory. We can bear the cross in this life because we hold to the resurrection that rules the next life. It all comes right in the end. So speaks the blood of Jesus. That is the better voice. Alleluia! Amen!

Thar She Blows!

New water meter and the starting point for the garden's watering system.

The Hudspeth boys, Bill, William, and Andrew spent the weekend putting in a new water line for the Community Garden that starts in the front of His House just north of the church. The new water line will let us track how much water we use for the Children's Garden and the Community Garden--and help us accurately allocate the costs to the Community Development Ministry.

The end point of the water line is in the Children's Garden.

Because we now have a separate underground water line from the street to the gardens, Robert West won't have to spend valuable mowing time moving hoses and, overall, our church yard will have a neater appearance. We'll also be able to more effectively conserve water and be better stewards of the wonderful resources that God has given us.

A work in progress.

The picture above shows the complexity of putting together even a small garden space when the garden doubles as both a learning center for kids and as an attractive recreational area for both adults and children. Be sure to stop by and watch this work in progress. In the coming days Dave and Dawson Stice will be putting up the picket fence that will front the garden. Be sure to say "howdy" and thank them for their help!

Desiring a God-Shaped Life: An Ash Wednesday Sermon

Exodus 33:12-23; 34:5-9; Psalm 103:1-14;

Luke 6: 32-36; Ephesians 4:17-24, 32; 5:1-2

Tonight, in keeping with the purpose of an Ash Wednesday theme, we come to repent of our sins and to get back on a path toward spiritual purity. This is consistent with God’s calling of us to become his representative people, showing forth his character in our daily lives and interactions.

Many people believe that the purpose of salvation is to give us a way to escape hell so that we can go to heaven, and that all we have to do to receive this salvation is to say the sinner’s prayer and profess our faith in the fact that Jesus is our only Savior, with some churches adding baptism at this point, and when we have done those things, we will be set for eternity. This cannot be true because it does not fit with God’s purpose for offering us salvation.

God’s purpose in offering salvation is that we might be restored as his royal children and obedient servants, able and willing to represent his holy character in our daily lives. It is true that, as a by-product of this restoring work of God in our lives, we will when we die enter eternal blessedness, but, let me re-emphasize, that is a by-product not the goal of God’s salvation. The goal of God’s salvation is to restore us to being able to live for the praise of the glory of God by demonstrating God’s character to people around us.

People who try to slide by with claiming salvation without surrendering control of their lives to God would not even like the new heaven and new earth where God reigns totally and eternally; they would hate it and want to escape. They might even prefer to be in the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, but where they are free to rage against a Sovereign God who requires their submission.

Far better it is to get to know God in this life and to be pre-shaped by God’s character, to be in the process of being made fit to reign with him in eternity. It is not so bad as the slackards imagine. Indeed, the greatest secret in this world is that highest pleasure to be found is being restored, degree by degree, as children of God in God’s likeness.

All the hymns we have sung in this service are about the joy of submitting ourselves for being transformed in Christ, “changed from glory into glory,” “Take your truth, plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in your likeness, that the light of faith may be seen today in our acts of love and our deeds of faith.” “Purify my heart, cleanse me from within and make me holy.” “Change my heart, O God, may I be like you.” “All to Jesus I surrender, Lord, I give myself to Thee; fill me with thy love and power, let thy blessing fall on me.”

The scriptures we have read are also on this theme.

Our Old Testament text: While Moses was on Mount Sinai with the Lord God, the people of Israel had seriously broken their recently formed covenant by making and worshiping the golden calf. The Lord and Moses, both angry, had negotiated what to do with “Your people,” “No, your people.” Moses agreed to lead the people only if the Lord would accompany them. He argued that, if the Lord did not go with them, they would not have the distinctive character that they needed to fulfill their end of the covenant with the Lord, for the Lord had called them to be his representative nation among all nations. Moses finally asked that the Lord reveal his glory to him so that he would better know the Lord’s character. The Lord complied, revealing his glory as resting in his character as a God who is not only holy, righteous, and just, but also merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

Our Psalm text: Our Exodus passage is reinforced in Psalm 103 where it says that the Lord made his ways known to Moses and then gives the description that he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Actually, the Exodus passage has echoes not just in Psalm 103, but also throughout the Old Testament.

If we may pick one of those characteristics as dominant, as involved in all the other characteristics, it would surely be steadfast love, the Hebrew word being hesed. This is the kind of love that does for the loved ones what they cannot do for themselves so that they can remain in the divine family covenant. This is the kind of love that, in human terms, is shown by a kinsman redeemer who takes risks and makes sacrifices to maintain weaker members of the family in the family fabric. The Lord God is the very model of a kinsman redeemer, and that is the character he wants his people to demonstrate in their relationships with one another and even with peoples of other nations. It takes a lot of transformation for the people of God to show kinsman redeemer type love for the lost, the last, the lagging, and the lawless.

Remember that Moses said that the reason he needed to know God’s character was that otherwise, the people of God could not be distinctive. If we do not know who God is, we cannot be shaped in God’s image.

Our Gospel Text: Luke reports that Jesus asks us to love our enemies and to do good without expecting anything in return. He sums this up as being merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful. In other words, we are to replicate God’s own qualities in our relationships with even the difficult people in our lives. Indeed, it becomes evident that Jesus is our model, our exceedingly high standard of how to do what he asks of us.

Our Epistle Text: Paul understands that our maturation in Christlikeness is gradual, step by step, degree by degree. We do not get there all at once. We invite Jesus to rule our lives, and then we grow in our ability to follow him. But Paul expects us to be clear about the direction we are moving, that we are putting off the old self, corrupt through deceitful desires, and we are putting on the new self in which our dominant desire is to be shaped by the character of God as we know him through Jesus Christ. Our new self is created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. The characteristics of this new self sound a lot like the character of God which God revealed to Moses: mercy, grace, patience, steadfast love, and faithfulness.

Of what do we most need to repent? Sin. Sin is anything that causes us to miss the mark, to become diverted from the goal of our calling to represent the character of God that has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ. What is it that makes us less merciful, gracious, patient, steadfastly loving, and faithful than God is? It is that of which we most need to repent and to be purified.