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Stream Audio Worship AboveNote that we may not be able to include the hymns in pre-recorded services - thank you for your understanding. Covered under ONE LICENSE: #400013-P Unrecognizable: Our Future in Christ
Sunday, May 9th, 2021 || 6th Sunday of Easter || Pastor Christy Wright Yes, we are meeting outdoors at 9:30 AM, this Sunday in front of the Church! For full details, please read below in the Community Announcements Section. If you are unable to join us in person, we invite you to light a candle at 9:30 AM and join us in prayer online or over the phone for a pre-recorded service. Audio worship, including the prelude and postlude, prayers, and the sermon is available at https://georgewhitefieldumc.weebly.com/worship-services or over the phone at (978) 990-5000, access code 719365#. Just dial in, enter the access code on your keypad, and you will hear the service begin with music. Note that we may not be able to include the hymns in pre-recorded services - thank you for your understanding. Announcements Opening Hymn Scripture Reading - John 15:9-17, 26-27 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning. Sermon As I was preparing for this week’s service, a song kept popping into my head: All You Need is Love by The Beatles. All you need is love (all together now) All you need is love (everybody) All you need is love, love Love is all you need When this song was first released in 1967 during the Summer of Love, we were in the midst of the first Civil Rights Movement in the US. Generally speaking, there were two responses to this Beatles hit: the first one was that life was as simple as love - all we need to do is love one another, and we can solve any conflict that comes our way. But a second response arose: we are naive to think that love is the only solution to the world’s problems. This was a rejection of the tranquil and hazy notion that undefined and unchallenging love can do anything. For anyone who has been married for a year or seventy years, love is hard sometimes. On the outside, it looks like love is a never-ending honeymoon period. Love is this euphoric timelessness that carries you through anything and everything. Rather, on the inside, love is mostly unrecognizable from the fairy tales - there are conversations to be had, apologies to make, wrong-doing to confront, and reconciliation on the other side. In this morning’s scripture passage, we hear Jesus imploring the disciples to remember his love and the love of God in all they do. In this, there is great joy - joy that deeply abides through the paradise of love and the heartache of wounded spirits. Jesus tells the disciples that they have a new model for love: they’ve heard the phrase, “love one another as you love yourself,” but they’ve never heard that they were called to love as Jesus loves. This challenge to love suddenly became much more difficult for the disciples, for human love is imperfect, but divine love is pristine. How were they to ever meet Jesus’ gold standard of love? The good news is that we aren’t alone in this: Jesus sent the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to lead us in such love. And, if we go back to the original language in the passage, we find a richer definition of love; it’s not some dreamy emotion, but rather, the concept of love in this passage has implications for our everyday life. The word for love in this case is agape in Greek, which comes from the Latin for caritas - which means charity. This means that we love by doing, not simply feeling something toward other people. Love, in other words, is a verb. So when Jesus says, “Love others as I have loved you,” what he’s actually saying in the original language is, “do unto others as I have done for you.” This is why Jesus explains love through the image of laying down one’s life for others. To love others in Jesus’ example is to speak life into another’s situation, not death. To love others is to offer our whole selves in commitment to healing and reconciliation. To love others is to be open to the transformation of a relationship, even when that means stepping back, stepping in, or stepping up. As Scholar Carmelo Álvarez puts it, “Love becomes a transforming power more than a superficial and emotional expression.” And Jesus has appointed us to do this work. To be appointed is an honor, and a serious thing: it is a commitment we make to follow through on. Just as a pastor in the United Methodist Church is appointed, and goes where called, so too we are called by God to go where God sees work to be done - by us. As close this sermon series about being unrecognizable Christians in a world that so desperately needs God’s love, as we look to the future, we are called to respond to Jesus’ appointment for us: bear the fruit of the Spirit, of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. We are called to be the Body of Christ, and do love. So go, bear fruit. So go, love. So go, transform the world. For we go not alone, but in the example of Jesus Christ, sustained by God the Creator, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hymn of Meditation Benediction And now, may the peace of the Lord Christ go with you wherever God may send you; may God guide you through the wilderness, protect you through the storm; may God bring you home rejoicing at the wonders God has shown you; may God bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.
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