Messages inviting us to live in and from the Love of God revealed in Christ Jesus.
Oh beloved one of the most basic foundations of the gospel is this reality that no matter how bound and distorted and unable to ASCEND we have become. Jesus DESCENDED, God sees us not with eyes of judgment but the same eyes of Jesus - the eyes of Compassion - He sees and beloved that is good news!
I do believe in the Kingdom come! A space where we as followers of Jesus embrace the promised gift of the Father and He becomes visible in real time in human lives - I believe the greatest hope for post modernity in the west is that the Kingdom of God is revealed in human lives beginning in me. It is His gift to us and it is good news!
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom” Luke 12:32 ‘With' is the actual order and reality of God's kingdom... When our culture and our bodies tell us the story of fear that God is absent and we are alone. Jesus reveals the truth of God's presence and participation. He is God with us. As it was in the beginning is now and will be forever, amen. And that is good news. You see to proclaim ‘the Lord be with you' is to proclaim the change that has shifted human history! He is not absent and we are not alone! What began in a garden of beauty, delight and abundance with man that was disrupted, distorted and deformed by the fracturing of sin we discover a God who is unwilling to allow man's weakness to define the story. God became what He created so that man could become more than a forgiven soul but a people restored to life ‘with' God!
So what are you staring at? To answer that question well is to live rich. I have titled this message living rich. The Good News we proclaim is Jesus invitation to become rich toward God is not achievement or the accumulation of good behavior but in the storing up of what is true - we have a Good Father whose intent is to provide and protect us that we can trust. That Father wants to protect us from what can in the end control and take His most treasured gift to us - life. That life is found not storing but in giving what we have been freely given - love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness.
The resolve of Jesus that Luke describes in our text is not just about confrontation its about an inhabited revelation of the heart of the Father that involves more than just known power religious and political powers of the day - its about something much more personal. Jesus is inviting His friends and followers to a life led by the power and authority of self giving self emptying love and forgiveness - this is not about perceived dominance. This is about revealing a whole new way of living and being where Heaven is revealed upon the earth and that beloved is good news.
This man has come to a land and a people over run and fractured - His very presence proclaiming ‘you are not invisible or forgotten' and now to the ‘man of the tombs' identified by his oppression Jesus presence unmistakably proclaims you sir may have forgotten who you are but I have not. Who is this Man? His name is Jesus, He who has come to the most disintegrated proclaiming by His very presence you are loved, you belong and you still have a story to tell and that is good news.
Notes Here Horatio Spafford. “It Is Well with My Soul.” Manuscript hymn, 1871. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (8)
Into a world longing for a Power strong enough to remove their oppressors Jesus looked past the Palms to embrace the Passion of the cross to unveil real and lasting Peace. Not by might, not by power as it had been known and defined but by My Spirit. A power revealed in self giving self emptying love and forgiveness - Peace for every man woman boy and girl and that is good news.
The Good News we proclaim in a world filled with distortion, distance and disconnection of every kind. There is a Man who trusts His Love is enough to Liberate and give life to the most broken to restore - Sonship like Jesus!
You see repentance is not just about our decision to stop doing certain things - its more about agreeing with God about what is real and true! Repentance beloved is agreeing with God about reality.
The Words God spoke over Jesus at His baptism were enough not just to rescue Jesus from temptation but allow Him to proclaim and reveal another Kingdom – His belovedness is the basis of His life and ministry. In a world filled with 'good ideas' of how to use power to make our life work, the Fathers words of love over you and me today are still the basis His Kingdom is revealed and that is Good News.
Transfiguration then is not just an event to Peter, James and John but a glimpse of themselves, weighed down with sleep - with the weight of life. When they awake they see the dazzling glory of Jesus, is this what a human being looks like transformed from the fatigue and weight of by the good opinion of God towards all He has made - maybe this is reality? Beholding what you are and Becoming what you see – is to be formed and transformed by what is lasting and true.
Beloved the Good News we proclaim today in a world divided by wounds, fears and innumerable barriers God's Kingdom still comes when we hear His invitation and surrender to His Mercy! Mercy that enables us to freely love our enemies. Not as a spiritual task but as a result of mercy being rooted in us.
Real Religion - as revealed and defined by Jesus is not measured by the Power Centers of earthly empire and influence but by lives surrendered to Mercy and led by Love. The Good Life is the actual blessed life where God is able to love the world through you and me today and that is Good News!
In the deep Jesus reveals a deeper mystery something beyond hard work and effort - lives not defined by success, failure, emptiness or clutter - but in the abundance of encountering the mystery of the measureless heart of the Father revealed in Christ. Here they encounter what they had never known before measureless grace! And that is Good News.
Notes here
In the place and to the people looking for life, hope and change by either violent resistance or legalistic righteousness - Jesus enters the story and changes the story. He simply came as a son of His mother Mary and He changes the story from shame to honor from fear to joy! This is more than power on display this is who God is and what God does. He has come to invade humanities mortality by embracing mortality and revealing His life and that is good news!
Beloved the whole gospel could be summed up in this point: to tear filled angry young lady and to you and me - its time to rethink everything. Jesus was manifest to reveal that the living God looks at us, and says to us what he said to Jesus on that day. ‘You are my son/daughter, the one I love and in you I take great pleasure. He sees us, not as we are in our broken places, but as we are in Jesus Christ ( I never knew you is about how God knows you) and that is Good News.'
Beloved the Good News Gospel of Jesus that John describes in our text today “And the Word became flesh and lived among us and we beheld His glory” This is the good news - Christ has come to where we actually are...not where we would like to be- but as He is to reveal Heaven and restore earth!
Notes here Getty ImagesFor Unsplash+
To shepherds in the fields in the dark of night, in weakness and vulnerability light has broken in to proclaim a song that will anchor their life in Wonder - a Savior has been born for you - the forgotten and forsaken - He is Christ the Lord. And this is the message of Advent beloved in a place and at time that would normally be cold and dark - light and sound broke in to proclaim Good News to the most weak and vulnerable - Peace on earth and Goodwill to mankind. It was good news then and it is good news now - God became flesh - Wow!
The Good News we proclaim today in a world laden and weary with fear - Hope is the promise of Gods salvation in the man Christ Jesus. Hope arrives in person. So what do we do now? We repent. By changing our mind, our heart and our life - we change the way we live as a people surrendered to Hope over fear. A life that is not ruled by fear but by love and that beloved is good news.
The Good News we proclaim today is that Jesus came from His home to bring us home. His journey filled with betrayal, fear, manipulation and death had one clear goal to destroy the power that held humanity and creation under the grip of fear and death. He comes to a people living in exile from the garden of created order with God as an exile to bring the back home!
Advent beloved is a call to a different calendar for one simple reason to set a rhythm and pattern of calling out lives back into the real story - God became a man and changed the story forever - God in Christ has set things right for us and that is Good News! And really is all we need for Christmas.
The good news we proclaim is that the meaning of life is not Power to control life - the meaning of life is self giving self giving sacrificial Love!
Into a religious system that attributed value and worth to the strong and accomplished, the powerful and influential. Jesus reveals something beyond those weak measures - something not based in human accomplishment or accumulation.
Beloved the good news we proclaim today is that His Kingdom is closer than you think and comes to the One who invited us to live in whole hearted surrender to that good news that is revealed most not in the result of a ballot box but in the cross and co-suffering love. The greatest commandment is this - Love the Lord you God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. If you understand that, then the Kingdom of God is closer that you think!
Into a world that defined the limits of life by ‘Power and Influence' - where the Great Ones lord it over the little people...where we are hearing the constant message that unless we have the right Person as the ‘leader' of our nation - everything will collapse. Jesus reveals the heart of God and the plan of God that reveals heaven on earth - not by power or influence but by uncontrolling love and forgiveness.
Into a world filled with injustice, hate, division and despair then and now, that leaves us longing for a different existence. What is impossible with man real and lasting peace, justice and genuine love for one another in this life have become possible in this life because God is good.
The Good news we proclaim today is that Jesus did not come just to diagnose the cause of Divorce - but to reveal a Kingdom that sets free, restores and makes whole, this is a Kingdom where love reveals wholeness and grace brings life.
Jesus comes to proclaim a Kingdom led and kept by Love. He comes to elevate others at His expense because that is what Love does. Beloved the Good News we proclaim is that the strategy of Heaven while confusing to the world is still about revealing the Freedom, Forgiveness, Joy and Peace of Heaven to the human heart - not through a complex process of theology and self denial but through the largeness of the Fathers Mercy...that can boldy say who ever is not against us is for us.
This penniless teacher is revealing the same God who hoovered over darkness, empty non life and formless confusion and revealed light, life and order. That God is doing the same in real time to the people and in places we had not thought possible. Light, life and love have come to rescue all of humanity change the story and He still comes to change our story - and that beloved is Good News.
The Good News we proclaim today is that something has come into being that has changed the whole story of humanity - Mercy has triumphed over judgment! And that is Good News especially as we live in a world drowning in harsh judgment against one another and ourselves - Mercy Still Triumphs! God is still in the business of telling another story in your life and mine. Men and women held in captivity for years by addictions, abuses, failures and wounds - The Gospel proclaims God is still telling another story - a story of Mercy.
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