title: How many people did Jesus feed?

themes: feeding-the-five-thousand logos-christology transformation disordered-love bread-of-life scarcity-vs-abundance resurrection-appearances

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 14:13-21; John 6:35; Matthew 4:4; Romans 12:2; Romans 7:15; 2 Corinthians 1:20
**Series:** 2021

> Preached in the 'Songs of the Bible' series, this sermon on the feeding of the five thousand (Matthew 14:13-21) reframes the miracle around an overlooked question: why were the people hungry? They had forgotten food because they were absorbed in hearing Jesus, the Word/Logos of God. Drawing on the preacher's experience of losing himself in music, the sermon argues Jesus first fed the crowd with the word of God, then met their bodily needs. It develops a threefold transformation of mind (noos), soul/desire (psyche, malformed by sin and reformed toward God), and body, insisting salvation is whole-person transformation, not merely a ticket to heaven. The uncountable crowd points to God's limitless 'yes,' ending with an invitation to the table of the Lord and Jesus as the bread of life.

**Illustrations:** double-bass-practice-trance, logos-la-parole-speech, stranded-on-the-lake-on-purpose, more-than-counting-game

---

# August 1
## How many people did Jesus feed?

When Jesus heard about John, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. When the crowds learned this, they followed him on foot from the cities. When Jesus arrived and saw a large crowd, he had compassion for them and healed those who were sick. That evening his disciples came and said to him, “This is an isolated place and it’s getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus said to them, “There’s no need to send them away. You give them something to eat.” They replied, “We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish.” He said, “Bring them here to me.” He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves of bread and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them and broke the loaves apart and gave them to his disciples. Then the disciples gave them to the crowds. Everyone ate until they were full, and they filled twelve baskets with the leftovers. About five thousand men plus women and children had eaten. -Matthew 14:13-21

I started playing the double bass or string bass when I was in fifth grade. I practiced it a little bit and I was okay. I got a little more serious in high school and went to a few Allstates, but it was not more than something I enjoyed. I played in a community orchestra in College Station that performed some serious repertoire, and then I came to UT and I got even more serious about it.
I wasn't a music major like Matt. I was an economics major my first year, but I played a lot. I practiced a lot. And it was during that time that I really got serious about practice because I was able to focus on music in a way I'd never been able to before. I could practice for four hours without blinking and I'd come to the end of it, and realize that I was starving.
I hadn't eaten all day. I hadn't planned on practicing that long. I was lost in the moment. I could not be distracted by food because I was taken up by music. I was focused on something that mattered and I put everything else aside.
My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on songs of the Bible that looks through the scriptures in a way guided and retold in music. There are a lot of explicit songs in the Bible, but it all can be turned into song. For God’s love for us is so great that we cannot help but sing.

Today, How many people did Jesus feed?

So the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 or the feeding of the 4,000, is found in all four gospels. Not all of the stories of Jesus are found in all four gospels. This birth is not found in all four gospels, but only one. A lot of the parables are not found in all four gospels.
The feeding of the five thousand functions in about the same way in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is a little different in John, but we will get to that in a little bit.
What is often spoken of with the feeding of the 5,000 is like, “look how miraculous it is! Look how powerful God is! Look how amazing Jesus is!” It's a miracle to point to the power of God, to look at the power of God,.
Which is great and true, but there's another aspect to it that’s obvious when you think about it, but is rarely discussed. The obvious aspect is: why are the people hungry? Cause there wasn't a big advertising campaign that the disciples did to bring people over. Like, “Hey, we got free food.” There wasn't a bait and switch going on to try and get a big crowd and get a big draw to Jesus. Most of the time, when there's free food, it's for another reason.
But why were the people hungry? They had come to hear Jesus and they didn't know how long he was going to talk. They weren't thinking about food. They weren't thinking about meal times. They were focused on the word of God.
The word of God is a phrase that Christians use in a specific way that doesn't make a lot of sense outside the church. Sometimes the Word refers to the Bible or to what God is saying or to Jesus. It rarely means like a single word in this kind of sense.
The phrase ‘word of God’ comes from a Greek phrase, o logos Theou. Logos means a lot more than words. The early English translators used Word, but another way could be the logic of God, the reason of God, the purpose of God. All of the depth of meaning going on. We have the word of God offering words to people. In French, Logos is often translated as la Parole which means both word but also speech. Jesus is the speech of God. So in this sermon before the feeding the Speech of God gives speech. This is just this astonishing miracle. More than feeding 5,000, Jesus speaks to five thousand. God decided to speak in Jesus to people. How amazing is that? The son of God, equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, becoming human, taking on human flesh and speaking with a voice, the voice that has a tone, a tambour, a pitch. And of course, people were drawn to that word of God being spoken out. They were mesmerized by it. They weren't thinking about what they were going to eat. They were being fed by the word of God. In John's gospel, unlike in Matthew, the miracle of the feeding of 5,000 comes earlier in Jesus's ministry, but it's connected to this great description about Jesus being the bread of life later in the chapter. Jesus says, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
As well, the feeding miracles with the temptation narratives. When Jesus, after the baptism, goes into the desert and the devil says, “turn this stone into bread.” Jesus says, quoting scripture, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
This is the moment he was speaking of in the desert. The words coming from the mouth of God is taking place in that moment. People are taking it in. The people are drawn to it, to the true speech of God. It is a miraculous, transformational moment with a logistical issue on the back end. There's all these people. It's late in the day. The disciples think of an efficient solution: send them home. I mean, I think this is what I would do. “We didn't promise food. Like what do they expect?” I don't know what the people expected, but I know why they were there. They weren't there for food. They weren't there for some Jesus swag.
An event had taken place and their lives were transformed. Even more than the musical trance I felt in the practice room when I stopped counting how long I had been playing and ended up starving, each of them had a mountain top experience with Jesus. They were hearing the word made flesh speaking in a human voice. Their lives would never be the same.
How many people did Jesus feed?

Jesus fed people first, not with fish and bread, but with the word of God, with the logos of God, with the reason of God, with the logic of God, with the why of God, with the yes of God. As Paul says, all the promises of God are yes in Jesus Christ. The people were fed by his word, but they are still flesh with human needs. Jesus first met that most important need of the God-sized hole in their life with the bread of life, but Jesus was not going to forget other needs as well. Salvation in Christ is not just about a ticket to heaven. It's not about a get out of jail free card or a life raft in the fires of hell. It is a transformation of mind, soul, and body.
The people who heard Jesus that day had their minds transformed through the word of God. This is the central aspect. In Greek, mind is usually Noos. It is the aspect of us that understands reality. When the people heard Jesus, they were in contact with the Noos of God, the mind of God in Jesus Christ. And you cannot leave that encounter unchanged.

As Paul says in Romans 12, do not be confirmed to this world but transformed by the renewing of our minds. Faith is not about leaving our minds at the door but understanding that reality is deeper than empiricism.
So their minds were changed. Their souls were changed, as well. In Greek, the soul is psyche and functions as the location of desire. So the mind is the intellect, is the perceiving unit. The soul is the human desire factory. Hunger is a good metaphor for desire.
Our desires are our hungers. It is what we long for. A way to understand the Christian language of original sin is that our desires have been malformed by sin so that we don't desire the good anymore. Like Paul in Romans seven, I do the things I don't want to do, and I don't do the things I want to do. Our desires have been malformed, but in this encounter with Jesus Christ, our desires have been transformed and reformed to seek Jesus. This is whom I desire. I desire God. I desire Jesus. I desire the possibility of this radically transformed new life. I am no longer satisfied to eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow I die. That is not on the top of the list after meeting Jesus.
So these people, this audience, has had their mind transformed and their soul transformed but Jesus doesn't leave them there. And it's in the scale of it that we see the power of this miracle and this story.
Children usually like song because of the scale and the gradations of numbers. Is it more than 10? Yes. Is it more than 20. Yes. Is it more than 30, more than 40, more than 50. Yes, it is going to be yes. And even when we get to the end of 5,000 people, Jesus fed that day. It's more than that.
5,000 isn’t a hard count. There wasn't a census of the people there. We don't know who all was included in that number. Jesus didn't cap out the possibility of transformation that day. Jesus included all in the transformations of their mind, their soul and their body.
When we encounter Jesus, we are no longer the same. If we try to do the same thing, we realize we are stuck in the muck of our mistakes. We are stuck in the muck of our vices. If you have an encounter with Jesus, realizing that the God who created everything loves you, even you, loves me, even me. That God truly forgives you and sees you as worthy of love and time and attention. When we have that encounter and pretend like nothing has changed, it’s like being stranded in the middle of the lake and when people stop to help, you say “no thanks. I meant to run out of gas.” Sometimes we like the feeling of being stranded. We like being a victim. Sometimes we like some of the vices that we have become accustomed to. We like desiring those things that we know hurt us. We like that little bit of pain. We want to keep control, but ultimately God’s yes is greater than our no, when we encounter the risen Lord, we will be transformed.

How many people will Jesus feed? 50? 500? 5,000?

There is room for you at the table of the Lord. Come and See. Love is here. God is here for you. Jesus is the bread of life. And he gives you this day the food that will never perish.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.


site: sermons

title: Jesus Likes to Party

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: bee-creek-umc

themes: joy wedding-at-cana grace-as-gift us-vs-them joy-amid-suffering holy-communion

text:
**Scripture:** John 2:1-11; John 1:1-4; 2 Corinthians 1:4; 2 Corinthians 1:20; Ecclesiastes 3:4
**Series:** 2021

> Part of the 'Songs of the Bible' series, this sermon on the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11) argues that Jesus likes to party. Opening with the preacher's sports fandom (Vince Young's Rose Bowl win, Astros World Series games), it diagnoses how the Reformation and modern culture redefined celebration as losing one's inhibitions, leaving Christians seen as joyless. Against this, Jesus turns six jars of water into abundant good wine, refusing to let the party die. The sermon's central move is that worldly celebration is zero-sum (one team's joy is another's sorrow) and bounded by in-groups and out-groups, but Christ's joy has no outgroup: all are invited to the Lord's table. Joy is held alongside suffering (Ecclesiastes, 2 Corinthians 1) so the church can celebrate on behalf of those who cannot, while confession means letting go of guilt and accepting God's yes. The closing note: God not only loves you, God likes you.

**Illustrations:** vince-young-rose-bowl, astros-world-series, reformation-feast-days, bacchanals-dionysius, high-school-parties, god-as-santa-claus, wedding-guest-list, wine-purified-water

---

# July 25
## Jesus Likes to Party

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the celebration. When the wine ran out, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They don’t have any wine.” Jesus replied, “Woman, what does that have to do with me? My time hasn’t come yet.” His mother told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Nearby were six stone water jars used for the Jewish cleansing ritual, each able to hold about twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water,” and they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Now draw some from them and take it to the headwaiter,” and they did. The headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine. He didn’t know where it came from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. The headwaiter called the groom and said, “Everyone serves the good wine first. They bring out the second-rate wine only when the guests are drinking freely. You kept the good wine until now.” This was the first miraculous sign that Jesus did in Cana of Galilee. He revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him. John 2:1-11

I grew up going to football games at Kyle field in College station. My father and my grandfather had season tickets to the Aggies. And so I would go, usually not the UT game, but other games. I enjoyed the games. I enjoyed watching football. I enjoyed learning about the game and the strategy. I played all the sports growing up, but I was never super athletic. Like I was an offensive lineman in seventh grade. And then I realized that I was not really made for this. I have friends who continued on in football and God bless them. Some of them got scholarships to college and that's really awesome. I have two cousins who were scholarship athletes and have made wonderful careers because of the opportunities that football provided them. That was not for me, but I enjoyed it.
I got more interested in going to games when I was in college. My first year was the end of the Chris Simms era, and then Vince Young came to UT and he was really exciting. I learned to get really frustrated at the UT offensive coordinator who kept on making Vince young throw sideline screen passes and bubble screens. And it just was this absurd system, but he got better and the team got better. I was at the Red River Shootout when we lost to Oklahoma 65 to 13, but I didn't leave. I was not going to be the one who leaves the stadium. The next year we only lost 12-0. It was a weird, weird game, but it was fun.
The year after that, UT didn't lose a game. And they got to the championship game at the rose bowl in California against the University of Southern California Trojans (a school founded by Methodists) who had the Heisman trophy winner and the past Heisman trophy winner with Snoop Dogg on the sidelines. UT had Vince young, a decent offensive line. It was a good team at decent defense, many future NFL players on both sides of the ball. It was a great game and went back and forth. I'm not a fan of great games. I like blow outs for my team. I don't like the tension. And then at the very last second Vince Young scrambling around the corner into the end zone. I was watching it at a friend's parents' house outside of Houston. We were all so excited! We won. Well, we didn't really win. I wasn't playing the game, but it was a celebration. Does God ever want us to celebrate? Does God ever want us to party?

My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on songs of the Bible that looks through the scriptures in a way guided and retold in music. There are a lot of explicit songs in the Bible, but it all can be turned into song. For God’s love for us is so great that we cannot help but sing.

Today, Jesus likes to party.

We don't often think of Jesus as a partier, as a party dude. That's not the common portrayal. In some ways, I think that that has to do with a deficiency of our modern conception of partying. What does it mean to party? What is it to celebrate? There's really only a few categories of celebration that we can think of. There's a birthday party, there's an anniversary, there's a holiday party. There's a championship party. There's a wedding party.
At my point in life, a lot of parties and celebrations seems like logistical nightmares. It's just all the things you have to organize and plan and get ready and all the things that might happen or might not happen. Who's going to show up? Who's not going to show up? It's a tricky thing, but we don't often think of Jesus as a partier.

And we often don’t think about the Christian faith as filled with celebration. This is especially true for those outside of the church. Few would accuse Christians of being inveterate partiers. I mean, few of the common practices of the faith are filled with what many would understand as parties or celebrations today.
We might have a brunch after church one day: potluck, dinners, weddings. Yes, but most often Christians are not seen in the celebratory fashion. Now there's a history to this, especially in this country, due to the early Protestant influence of in the United States. Before the reformation, there were a lot of feast days on the calendar of the Western church; a lot of saints’ days. What this led to, from a business sense, was a very inefficient market and workforce, because there would be very few weeks when the workers would work five days a week. They'd have a holiday and they would celebrate. Life would be hard and challenging, but they would have many opportunities for cheer and celebration and parades. Different aspects of the Reformation cut out a lot of these feast days and these holidays and started associating celebrations with pagans, with what we called Bacanals, after the Greek, God of wine, Bacchus, or Dionysius. This is still carried over today. Partying became about the relinquishing of your inhibitions, not celebrating.
What this leads to today with kids in high school and junior high is the expectation that parties aren’t places where reputable kids go. Christian kids are the ones who don't go and party and don't go and celebrate. And it's those other kids who are always going to parties and keggers and beer pong and all of these kinds of things away from the gaze of parental eyes, because it's hard to be yourself when you're being chaperoned. Or Christian youth are hypocrites: saying one thing on Sunday morning and another on Friday Night.
When we come back to the God revealed in the Bible, when we come back to Jesus again and again, there is a celebration. Jesus is confronted by Pharisees and asked, “why do your followers celebrate so much? Why aren't they fasting like everybody else? Why are they so happy?” And what Jesus says is that while the bridegroom is with them, the people will celebrate. In the gospel of John, we have this wedding that is the first miracle.
John's gospel is different from the other three gospels in a number of ways. If you read it straight through, it's pretty easy to pick these differences up. First of all, the Gospel of John begins with a poem. Matthew begins with a genealogy. Luke begins with the story of the nativity of Christmas.
Mark begins with an announcement from John the Baptist of Jesus. John begins with a poem:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

This beginning is the connection between the Jesus revealed 2000 years ago, revealed most fully on the cross, with the creation of all things, everything through the son of God. The word made flesh and dwelt amongst us. Literally, the Word tabernacled with us or tented with us. Not someone living in your house. It is someone setting up a large tent with you.
When we go through the first chapter of John, Jesus sees a few people. He sees Nathaniel, who delivers one of my favorite lines in the bible: what good has ever come out of Nazareth?
Then we have a wedding. Jesus is there as a guest. And they run out of wine. Jesus was not a teetotaler, it’s important to remember, so he partook of the wine.
There was wine in Jesus's day and wine had a number of different alcohol levels. The cup bearer or waiter was a really important position because he was the one who would decide which wine would come next. If the party was wild, he would bring the lower alcohol wine. And so on. Winemaking purified water, which was really important because, otherwise, water would be often very bad. That is, it would give you the runs. So a little bit of wine is helpful, but Jesus had come to this party with his mother. He came to celebrate, not minister. He didn’t think it was going to be about him yet. But then. they ran out of wine. The large clay jars were empty and his mom says, “Jesus, do something about this.” He says, “My time has not yet come.” She repeats herself.
“Jesus do something about this.” So he does. He asks the workers to fill up the six large jars with water and take them to the chief waiter at the wedding. And the waiter says, where did you get this? “Everyone serves the good wine first. They bring out the second-rate wine only when the guests are drinking freely. You kept the good wine until now.” Jesus didn't let the party end or die. Jesus wasn't ready to go to the next thing.
Jesus likes to party, to celebrate. Jesus offers us reasons to celebrate.
There are a lot of hard things in this world. There are a lot of challenges. And one of the important things about faith is that it gives us the strength not to deflect our gaze from those challenges. We don't need to pretend that they're not there. We don't need to pretend like death is not around the corner or sickness or trials or challenges. We don't need to pretend that God is like Santa Claus, up there, giving us presents if we are nice and giving us sickness if we are naughty. That is not why Jesus came or was killed and rose again. Instead, when the word became flesh and tabernacled among us. When God came down to be with us, it was to make new all things, to redeem all things, to offer a reason, the best of reasons to celebrate now in this world.
For most of us, and most of the time, life is pretty darn zero sum. If one of us is celebrating, that means one of us is not. If you get the job, someone else doesn’t. If you get a spot at college, someone else doesn’t. You know, when I celebrated the victory of UT, fans of USC were not celebrating. They were not cheering. Two years ago, I was in Houston for game seven of the world series. And I was cheering and I was cheering. And then, for some reason, the manager at the time pulled Zach Greinke, who was pitching great. And then the ‘Stros gave up some hits and the Washington nationals and ended up winning. And I walked away quietly and drove home quietly. It did not feel good to lose a game seven, but I bet it felt good for the nationals to win. Two years before, I had celebrated as the Astros had won in Los Angeles against the Dodgers. Dodgers fans weren't happy that day.
Most celebrations, as well, have to do with invitations. You can't invite everybody to your wedding. It's logistically a nightmare. Kids can't invite everybody to their birthday party. Oftentimes, there are people you don't want to come to a party. People you would rather not talk to. Its like, “why didn't he invite cousin So-and-so? You know why I didn't invite cousin so-and-so.
So there's a concept of celebrations that has an in-group and out-group, but there is no outgroup with Jesus.
Jesus doesn't turn one jar into wine but six. Jesus doesn't save the party for one or a few, but for all.

Jesus likes to party. He doesn't want us to feel sorry.
When others think that they're not fine. He turns the water into wine.

To be faithful to Jesus, we need to show the world why we are celebrating, why we can be joyful even in the midst of the challenges. We can receive joy and peace at the Lord's table.
Now I am definitely not saying that you should feel guilty if you are not happy. As Ecclesiastes has it, there is a time to laugh and a time weep.

We remember Christ's sacrifice. And yet, Christ’s sacrifice is not the end of the story. Easter comes three days later. Death is defeated. We turn that mourning into dancing. All of us are not always in the same place in this. All of us are not always ready, but part of being the church is taking on the celebration for our brothers and sisters. When those around us cannot, we don't make them. If life is hard and you cannot celebrate right now, we stand with you as Jesus stood with his disciples. We mourn with those who mourn. We cry with those who cry and we laugh with those who laugh. We stand together with a God who stands with us.
As Paul said in 2 Corinthians
“Blessed be the God of comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
2 Corinthians 1:4 ESV

Confession, as well, is not about feeling guilty but letting go of those things that keep us from love and keep us from our neighbor and keep us from God. Talk of sin is not talk of guilt but the relinquishing of guilt at the foot of the cross. It is letting go of the no we tell ourselves about ourselves, and accepting the yes of God. As Paul says earlier in 2 Corinthians, “for all the promises of God find their Yes in Jesus.”
So when you celebrate, when you have the joy of faith, it is not at the expense of your brother, Christ’s love is not zero-sum. All our included and all are invited to the table of Christ’s love, because the God who created everything saw you as worthy of celebrating, not just you, but all of those around you. Your joy does not mean your neighbors sorrow. The joy of God is not in touchdowns or home runs but in the Lord of all creation claiming, even you, as lovable. God not only loves you, God likes you. So let's celebrate today.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

method: authored, not translated

license_apparatus: CC BY-NC 4.0


title: Love Abides

themes: abiding-in-christ love-is-patient congregational-decline radical-welcome evangelism presence-of-god

text:
**Scripture:** 1 Corinthians 13:8-13; John 15:4-5; Luke 24:28-29; Revelation 3:15-16
**Series:** 2021

> Preached on Ascension Sunday to close the Easter 'Works of Love' series, this sermon takes Paul's 'love never fails' (1 Cor 13) as 'love abides'—love lives and remains. Tracing 'abide' through John 15 (the vine) and the Emmaus road (Luke 24), Pruitt argues love is relationship, not one-way giving; God desires to be with us, especially when life is wrecked. He warns against the inward-focused, apathetic Laodicean church that fills seats and coffers, calling Bee Creek instead to radical welcome: every member, not just greeters, must welcome others into God's presence. Confessing his own shyness, he frames evangelism as an act of faith and the minister as a vessel, not a dam, that lets God's love flow.

**Illustrations:** big-lebowski-the-dude-abides, god-not-santa-claus-puppet-master, parents-who-only-give-stuff, abide-with-me-hymn, church-of-resurrection-visitor-privileges-revoked, pastors-shyness-mountain-reading-vacation, vessel-versus-dam-ministry

---

# May 16
## Love Abides

Love never fails. As for prophecies, they will be brought to an end. As for tongues, they will stop. As for knowledge, it will be brought to an end. We know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, what is partial will be brought to an end. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, reason like a child, think like a child. But now that I have become a man, I’ve put an end to childish things. Now we see a reflection in a mirror; then we will see face-to-face. Now I know partially, but then I will know completely in the same way that I have been completely known. Now faith, hope, and love remain—these three things—and the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:8-13

Abide is a word we don't hear much anymore. You don't really have phone calls or text exchanges with folks where they ask you what you're doing. And you say like, “Oh, I’m just abiding.” Or, “Sorry, I can't make it to brunch: I need to abide today.” It's not a common thing. It's probably most famously used in a movie from the late nineties called The Big Lebowski where Jeff Bridges plays this character named the dude. And he says multiple times: the dude abides. It means to live someplace. To abide is to remain, is to live. In the Bible, we see the word abide used as living fully. More than that, to abide is to never fail. When Paul says here that Love never fails, he is saying that love abides.
My brothers and sisters, we have been going through the works of love these past few weeks in the season of Easter, looking at how we can respond to the resurrection of Jesus Christ in practical ways. We end on this Ascension Sunday with a strange phrase, love abides, which we need to understand to mean: love lives. Love is no longer dead and buried as it was on Good Friday. Love lives. Love abides.

Let’s hold on to this word: abide. It is used a few times in the life of Jesus. One time is in John chapter 15, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches.” In John, Jesus is talking about vines and grafting on to the vine. For a vine to live it must be grafted on to a root system. It needs to live in the roots to live at all.

Another use of Abide comes from after the resurrection in Luke 24, the Emmaus texts. And so there's two people walking along telling about what happened in Jerusalem, sharing about it. They're surprised, they're amazed. They don't know how to handle it. And they come across another man. It was like, “Hey, what's going on?” And they're like, “Have you not heard the news of Jerusalem that Jesus of Nazareth was killed and is now alive?” They tell the story. And eventually they end up at their destination. And this other man is about to leave, but they say, “No. Evening has come. Stay with us. Abide with us.”

We have God asking us to live in him, we have disciples asking Jesus to stay with them, and then Paul reminding us that the Love that is God lives here and does not leave. There's a give and take. There is a relationship. There is love. Were all things with God a one way street, there would not be love. If it was just God giving us things over and over again, that's not love. If all your parents do for you is give you stuff, they do not show you love. They do not teach you how to be yourself. If all God did was give us blessings, we would not understand the depth of God's love. God doesn't just give us things. God is not this heavenly Santa Claus. Nor is God a puppet master controlling the world for our benefit. God desires to be with you. You are interesting and compelling to God. Even when things don’t seem to be going well. Especially when things don’t seem to be going well, God wishes to abide with you. But if we do not welcome God in our life, we cannot receive the peace that passes understanding. Yet even when we fail, God does not. We must speak like the disciples on the Emmaus road: Stay with us. Abide with us.” Jesus did not impose himself on them. We don’t have to get the house ready to welcome Jesus. In fact, it is when our house and our life are the most wrecked that God is most likely to be present with us. Love abides. God abides. God is not a fair weather friend. There is an old hymn I love that covers this beautifully.

Abide with me, fast falls the eventide
The darkness deepens Lord, with me abide
When other helpers fail and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me

As the hymn says, when others have fled and comfort is not there. Even when you are uncomfortable and life seems hopeless. Even in the midst of grief and sickness and loss, you are still loved by God. Even if you have never really thought about your faith, you are loved by God. Even if you've been going through the motions all your life, even if you were raised in the church, but never connected on a deeper level, you are loved by God. Love abides. Love is here. God has already come down to you. But that is not the end of the story because the end of the story with love is not the moment of realization. Love comes. And love stays. Love abides.
But life is often challenging. There can be moments in our life or in the life of others we know when they think, “Oh, that's nice. God loves me. That doesn't change a thing. That doesn't change the price of tea, or lumber, that doesn't help me pay my mortgage. That doesn't help me pay for my kid's college. What is this love of God? What does that actually do?”
I think this is honest. It's fair. What if I don't feel loved? What if I don't feel like I matter? Or, what if I don't need help? What if I've got it under control? I think the church today is not struggling due to society oppressing Christians, but just from apathy. People don’t care or don’t see the point. It is the same apathy that's been a challenge from the beginning of the church. It is the same apathy that the apostle John writes of in the beginning of the book of Revelation with the church of Laodicea, you are neither hot nor cold because of this, I will spit you out.

Four hundred years ago in this country or in Europe, the only churches that had members were dissenting churches. Otherwise, you were baptized after you were born and the closest church to where you lived was your church. In that way church membership as we understand it today is a relatively modern phenomenon. Membership in the church is not like membership in a HOA or a boat club. The church, though, has often fallen into this trap and tried to be more palatable to the broader culture or more palatable to the people already here. This is the inwardly focused church. It asks: What can the church do, to make us (me) more comfortable?

When we are an inward focused church, when we only care about the people who are already here, we quickly drift into the church of Laodicea. Membership is more about filling seats and filling coffers and less about encountering the living God in Jesus Christ. In order to stay vigilant against sliding into apathy as an organization, we need to stay in love with God. All of us. We need to remind each other that love abides here. We need to invest in what God is doing here with our gifts. We need to show love consistently, even when we don’t have to, when it’s not our job.

If we hold on to this insight from Paul that love abides, and this call from Jesus, “Abide with me,” we can see the church as the place where God is present and where we call others to be present with us and God. We are here to experience God. We are here because of a prior experience of God. We are here to prepare others for an experience of God. And to go together to serve our neighbor in the world where God is also. Joining a church is committing to being part of God’s presence here and committing to radically welcome others into God’s presence here. This doesn’t just mean ushers or greeters or staff. At the Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City, the largest methodist church in the country, when someone joins the church, the lead pastor says, “Alright, now your visitor privileges have been revoked. You need to start welcoming people.”

I am a fairly shy person. I don’t like phone calls. i usually don’t like talking to strangers. My idea of a dream vacation is either sitting and reading all day or climbing a mountain and then sitting and reading at the top of the mountain.

I can only give credit to God for bringing me to this place, for giving me the courage to speak to people about God. For helping me call folks and pray with them. Left to my own, I always feel like an imposition. Why would they want to talk to me? What if I make a mistake? What if I get a name wrong? What God has shown me is that every conversation with a stranger is an act of faith. It is not a test or an interview. Take a step to show God’s love. To speak to another because of Jesus is different than any other way of communication. We welcome people not because we are awesome or outgoing but because Jesus is alive and can transform lives and we want people to experience the overwhelming love of God in their life. We welcome people because love abides here and love never fails.

You are welcome in this place. Jesus is here. Love abides. But we want Bee Creek to be a place where people continually encounter their risen savior. To be that place, we need to continually welcome people into that space of encounter. That goes from me to the smallest child in the nursery.

Love abides. Let us not get in the way of love. That is the biggest thing in ministry and in preaching. God is the one who changes lives. God is the one who changes hearts. The best I can be is a vessel. The worst I can be is a dam. Our human nature is to dam everything up to keep ourselves comfortable. We mold our lives around avoiding what we don’t like. It takes faith to let God flow in this place. It takes faith to seek others out and welcome them. It takes faith to invite folks to church. A lot of people have history’s with church’s that aren’t pretty. Maybe there is someone in your life who isn’t ready to come into a building, but they could come to the harbor on Thursday or to a grow group or even just over for dinner.

Love never fails. As for prophecies, they will be brought to an end. As for tongues, they will stop. As for knowledge, it will be brought to an end. .... Now faith, hope, and love remain—these three things—and the greatest of these is love.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.


title: Love Believes All

themes: love-is-patient spiritual-deception forgiveness non-judgment identity-in-christ body-of-christ easter-works-of-love

text:
**Scripture:** 1 Corinthians 13:4-7; Matthew 18:23-35; Galatians 3:28; Matthew 18:21-22
**Series:** 2021

> Second in an Easter series on the 'works of love' (1 Corinthians 13), this sermon takes up 'love believes all things.' Opening with a poker memory and the adage that you don't want to be the sucker, Wilson contrasts worldly fear of deception with Pauline love. He distinguishes love from the naif, the wicked, the yes-man, the troll, and the mistrustful, arguing that the truly loving person who believes all things cannot really be deceived—because to deceive one full of love is only to deceive oneself. The Avett Brothers' 'Ballad of Love and Hate' models love waiting undeceived for the repentant. Refusing the role of 'heavenly HR department,' he reads 1 Corinthians 13 as a portrait of Jesus (Jesus believes in you) rather than an ethical guideline, and pairs Jesus' seventy-times-seven forgiveness with the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18). The call: stop judging others' worthiness, receive mercy and pass it on, and live this out as members of Christ's body in the church.

**Illustrations:** poker-with-grandfather-john-huebel, poker-sucker-at-the-table, dr-pepper-10-2-4-commercial, online-discourse-pr-talking-points, avett-brothers-ballad-of-love-and-hate, heavenly-hr-department-metaphor

---

# Love Believes All
## April 18

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:7

The first person I ever played poker with was my grandfather, John Huebel. He loved wildcards and hated betting real money, at least with the grand kids. He had poker chips and we'd play with poker chips, and he might've bet with his friends, but with his grandkids, it was all pretend. Or it was like penny, nickel, dime. We usually played seven card stud or five card draw with wild cards, whatever the rotating dealer would pick when he would deal. My grandfather would often pick five card draw Dr. Pepper, which was tens, twos, and fours are wild. Thanks to the old Dr. Pepper commercial, where you should have a Dr. Pepper at 10, two and four, which just seems like a lot of sugar in a person's body. It was fun to play with granddad.

But there's an adage in poker:  if you sit down at a table and you can't point out the sucker, then you are the sucker. Poker is a game where you don't want to be deceived. You want to be the deceiver in order to win. What does that have to do with love?
My brothers and sisters. We are continuing our series on the works of love, responding to God in this season of Easter. On how we can put into practice the reality of Christ's resurrection. We're looking at a few different verses in first Corinthians. Last week, we talked about how love builds up, how love is not an addition to our lives, but is the foundation. This week, we're talking about how love believes all things.
The whole of chapter 13 is one of history's great poetic masterpieces in Greek or in English or in any language.
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-6 ESV

There's a reason why this chapter is read at so many weddings. Love is patient. When you love someone you're patient with them. Love is kind. When you love someone, you're kind to them. Love does not boast, Et cetera.
But then it's as if Paul crescendos with this next part: love believes all things. All things, Paul? I mean, if you believe all things, doesn’t that make you a sucker? There's a lot of people out there selling things. The internet is full of people who want to give you the deal of a lifetime. Deals that are too good to be true, over and over again. Like with most of the Bible, we have a chance to take Paul's words seriously or unseriously. Unseriously is to take them to mean, ‘Oh, it's a nice sentiment. But we live in a real world, Paul, you wouldn't understand what I have to go through, Paul, you don't get it, Paul. There's a lot of snakes out there, Paul.’
To take it seriously, though, is to look at the world in a different way.

In order to take Paul seriously, I want us to think of a few ways that we can respond to the world.

The Naif believes everything that is said, just because it is said. This is different from love. We don't want to be naive. Love believes not out of ignorance but because love is centered on the absolute truth of God and not the proximate risks in front of us. The wicked one believes everything said that is evil because they are wicked. The yes-man believes whatever the boss says, the troll believes whatever will bother the people they don't like. A lot of these responses you can really see in online discourse. I mean, if you're not online, God bless you. But there are certain key words and groupings and ways of making sure that you have the proper response and policing other people’s response to different news of the day.
There's almost a sense that when news items come out, everybody is being given a public relations line. And what public relations teaches, for instance, in an interview, never answer the question asked, but the one you wish was asked, it's a sure way to not talk to people. Is the point dialogue and communication, or is the point getting your message across? Is it just about your message?

The mistrustful one believes nothing. They do the opposite of what love does. Mistrust sees other people, as competition, as threats. It sees the world as threats, Mistrust divides the world into us and them, they are after it, they are trying to get it. We've got to protect ourselves from them.
Yet in Paul's letter to the Galatians. He says there is neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free. There is no man and woman, all are one in Christ Jesus To believe all things is to be unafraid of losing, to be unafraid of being called a sucker. To not want to look like the smartest in the room, like the cleverest in the room. Love, though, believes all things.

Okay. So all of those are ways of responding to the words of others. How do we understand ‘believes all things’? Does love believe all things on the internet? I mean, Paul didn't have internet at this time. Paul isn’t talking about people far away but people in our lives.
But the key here for Paul is to realize that what Paul is saying is that if your heart is full of love, you're willing to be deceived. Being the sucker is not the worst thing that could happen to you. In fact, the truly loving one who believes all things cannot be deceived, because to try and deceive him is to deceive oneself. If I try and to deceive someone who loves me, I am only deceiving myself. If my child lies to me and my love is full, my love is not going to change.

And good example of this is the Avett Brothers song the Ballad of Love and Hate

> Love writes a letter and sends it to Hate
My vacation's ending, I'm coming home late
The weather was fine and the ocean was great
And I can't wait to see you again"
>
> Hate reads the letter and throws it away
"No one here cares if you go or you stay
I barely even noticed that you were away
I'll see you or I won't, whatever"

And there a lot of verses, but then it ends in this beautiful moment of reconciliation.

> Love has been waiting patient and kind
Just wanting a phone call or some kind of sign
That the one that she cares for who's out of his mind
Will make it back safe to her arms
>
> Hate stumbles forward and leans in the door
Weary head hung down, eyes to the floor
He says, "Love, I'm sorry, " and she says, "What for?
I'm yours and that's it, whatever
I should not have been gone for so long
I'm yours and that's it, forever
Your mine and that's it, forever"

Love is not deceived here in this song. Hate deceives himself and love is there on the other side of the epiphany.

So what does this mean practically, pastor? I mean, it’s a nice song and sentiment and it is good to be patient, but there is a limit, right? We’ve got to be responsible.

Good question.

Many of you have really important jobs and you've been in really important positions of authority in your career and in your life. And you've had to make decisions about hiring and firing people, about responding to situations of making critical decisions for the life of your company, for the life of your nonprofit or state. All of you have had to make critical decisions for the life of your family and this is good and important, but we have to be weary of falling into this trap of putting ourselves into the position of a heavenly HR department or c-suite or heavenly parent where we are the ones making the judgment on the worthiness of others. Jesus didn't come to die on a cross to show us the best practices for running a business, but to offer us life eternal beyond the scarcity of this world.
Let us not think about ‘Love believing all things’ from a position of righteousness, but from the opposite one. Paul isn't giving us an ethical guideline with 1 Corinthians 13. Paul doesn’t say, ’be patient. Be kind.’ Paul instead shows us how Jesus acts and how Jesus loves. We can easily replace the word love here with the word Jesus: Jesus is patient, Jesus is kind, Jesus believes all things, Jesus believes in you.
Jesus is not a sucker for believing in you. Even when you have strayed, even when your brother has strayed, even when the people in your life have strayed. Jesus believes in you. Even when it doesn't make any more sense, Jesus believes in you. Even when you have burned every bridge and yet refuse to admit that you are at rock bottom, Jesus believes in you.

So we should trust others, even when they're not worthy of that trust. In the gospels, when Jesus is asked how often should someone forgive a brother who wrongs then? So it's not seven times, but seven times seven times or seven times 77 times. Jesus doesn’t mean that you should forgive 49 times or 539 and then stop forgiving. You should forgive again and again. This is the parable Jesus says to explain himself.

Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle accounts, they brought to him a servant who owed him ten thousand bags of gold. Because the servant didn’t have enough to pay it back, the master ordered that he should be sold, along with his wife and children and everything he had, and that the proceeds should be used as payment. But the servant fell down, kneeled before him, and said, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’ The master had compassion on that servant, released him, and forgave the loan. “When that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred coins. He grabbed him around the throat and said, ‘Pay me back what you owe me.’ “Then his fellow servant fell down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he threw him into prison until he paid back his debt. “When his fellow servants saw what happened, they were deeply offended. They came and told their master all that happened. His master called the first servant and said, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you appealed to me. Shouldn’t you also have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’”
Matthew 18:23-35 CEB

It is so easy to fall into this trap of receiving mercy and then refusing to give it. It is an act of faith to stop putting ourselves in the position of judgment. It has to all start with God. Let us stop putting ourselves in positions of spiritual authority. Let us come humbly to the table and receive the mercy that we have been given. Let us not receive mercy and then turn around and spit on our brothers and sisters. Let us turn around and share that mercy.

Jesus believes in you. Jesus forgives you. This is what it means to believe all things and not be deceived. It's hard to be willing to be a sucker for Jesus. You need other people. You need the Holy spirit to stand with you and remind you that God is the center. We need each other to remind us how to show love. To remind us of our past. To remind us of our future with God. This is what it means to be a part of a church. To join a church is to join a club of the perfect put together but, as our mission has it, a community where imperfect people are transformed by the perfect love of God and change the world together. We are not members of a club but members of a body: hands and feet and eyes and ears and shoulders, a place where we can admit and proclaim to each other that God believes in you. Where we can hold each other to account when we are not sharing the mercy we have received. And where we can keep all of our focus on the miraculous beauty of God’s overriding love for us.

In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit.
Amen.


title: Love Builds Up

themes: building-up-vs-puffing-up god-is-love jealousy letting-go-of-control food-sacrificed-to-idols christian-community resurrection

text:
**Scripture:** 1 Corinthians 8:1; 1 John 4:7-10; 1 Corinthians 7; James 1:23-24
**Series:** 2021

> Opening a Works of Love series on First Corinthians, this Easter sermon takes 1 Corinthians 8:1 ('knowledge puffs up but love builds up') and argues that to build people up is to build them up on love that is already present, since God first loved us (1 John 4). Building up means refusing to control or be jealous of others (Kierkegaard's 'devil's martyr'), illustrated by the preacher's experience of Australian 'tall poppy syndrome.' Through the risen Christ believers are freed from unloving habits and called to practice love together in the church and toward neighbors, including online, because God has already built them up in love.

**Illustrations:** tall-poppy-syndrome-australia, home-remodel-vs-build-up, kierkegaard-devils-martyr, mirror-forgetting-james, righteous-posters-vs-people

---

# Love Builds Up
## April 11, 2021

Now concerning meat that has been sacrificed to a false god: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes people arrogant, but love builds people up. -1 Corinthians 8:1

When I was in eighth grade, my family moved to Australia. My father was a college professor at Texas A&M University and he had earned a sabbatical leave to finish rewriting a health textbook. We found a spot in Newcastle, Australia. So my family and I moved down to Australia and lived in an apartment overlooking the beach. It was lovely. It was absolutely gorgeous to look out and see nature in that kind of way. We had a number of really beautiful experiences living there for about six months. We were able to see the Great Barrier Reef, back in the nineties when it was more great than it is now. We were able to see Uluru or Ayer’s Rock in the middle of the Outback. I was able to attend a high school at Newcastle High school, where the 90s band, Silverchair, went to school. That’s a deep cut.
I did not have a great time in Australian high school there. The school year starts in January so I was in Grade 9. It was very different for me. I mean, it is not a great time to be a 14 year old boy anywhere, but some things were hard for me there. And then you have this issue with some Australians. I'm not going to throw all of them under the bus. There is an issue with some Australians that is called tall poppy syndrome. Tall poppy syndrome comes from how, in a poppy field, you want all the plants to be about the same height in order to make the harvest simpler. So if there's a tall poppy, you cut it down so that it's more uniform. What this means in practice for some in Australia is that they love to tear down people who are trying and doing well. I tried at school, I didn't try too hard, but I was new and I was different. I was trying and I got cut down, over and over again. The kids at school cut me down. It is a tough age. I don’t blame the students as much as the country. But really, all I needed was to be built up.
What does it mean to build someone up? It is not just kind words or compliments but something more.
In the season of Easter, we are beginning a new sermon series titled Works of Love. We're looking at a number of passages from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, including slowly going through that most famous of passages: 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient. Love is kind. We'll get to that soon, but before that we will start right here in 1 Corinthians 8:1.
The previous chapter, 1 Corinthians 7, is one of those odd areas of the Bible where Paul says explicitly that he is responding to a practical situation. And then he responds about the challenges of human sexuality and how it's best to be celibate and dedicate yourself to God, but for most everyone, marriage can be okay.
This opens a different can of worms than we are getting to in this series, but it is important to understand that Paul is responding to the practical needs of the community. And then he gets to 1 Corinthians 8. The first part of the first verse responds to practical issues in the Corinthian church. In this case, specifically, responding to what is to be done with food that has been sacrificed to idols? Can we eat it? This has to do with how the disciples understood the sacrifice of the temple in this new period with Jesus. If we can eat whatever we want, can we eat those things?
So Paul responds, in dramatic fashion, in a way that basically says that knowledge puffs up but love builds up. To build something up means to construct it from the ground up. If you are remodeling your home, you're not going to build up. A new addition is not a build-up. As well, knowledge is not bad in itself, but it can be distorted. Humans have this amazing ability to take something good given to us by God and to twist it and distort it.
The difference between what puffs up and what builds up is love. Love is the ground. Love is the building. Love builds up. To build up is to build up love. Love builds up by presuming that love is already present.
 When we claim that love builds up, that is to admit that we do not. Only the unloving person thinks that you can build anyone up by controlling them. To love someone is not to control them. To try and control another person is to be unloving. This includes our children. If we try to control our kids, we are not showing them love. If we will never let them stumble, we will never let them stand. We can protect them and mitigate the greatest of harms but we cannot control them.
Love also means not being jealous of others. The Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, has this lovely expression: the jealous person is the devil's martyr. They witness to the works of the devil. When you are jealous, you witness to the works of the devil. You tear down God's kingdom through the very act of jealousy. That's the issue with this whole Tall Poppy Syndrome, the fixation on the actions of others is unloving and stems from jealousy. But we don’t need to do that, even in Australia.
This season of Easter, through the power of Christ's resurrection, we can let go of the not-loving things in our life. We can work to let go of jealousy, and I include myself here. For I may think, “Yeah, another pastor has that. Gosh, another church, etc.” Before I can let those things go, I need to name them and admit to myself that I have been unloving. I need to offer it to Jesus.
I need to receive grace and forgiveness, and then let myself be built up by love. So that's the issue of jealousy and the devil’s martyrdom. But we are not alone. Literally, you are not alone right now. Even if you are watching online by yourself or listening to the podcast, you are not alone. We live in community with others. There are people in our lives. People, whom we claim to love. So how can we get to a point of building up, instead of puffing up.
I think, first of all, we need to remember that what is truly built up in love is built up on love.

We can best understand through the person of Jesus Christ. In the first letter of John, he lays it all out:

“Dear friends, let’s love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love. This is how the love of God is revealed to us: God has sent his only Son into the world so that we can live through him. This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins.

Love is what Jesus does. Love is who Jesus is. When others see a leper, Jesus sees a child of God. When others see an adulterer, Jesus sees a child of God. Love is not a choice or a feeling. Love is not a many splendid things. The love that God is has been revealed to us: God has sent his singular son into the world so that we can live through him. It is not that we love God but that God first loved us. That is how we can be built up. The foundation of love is God’s love for us. It is already there. God already loves you. We see that at Easter with Jesus.

Easter is the season of encountering the risen Lord. All those who encounter the risen Jesus are changed.

And if the change is going to last, we have to do it. James writes that if we don’t put our faith into practice it is like looking in the mirror and forgetting what we look like. If we don’t intentionally spend time loving people and building people up, we are going to forget and fall back into old habits. We are going to start tearing people down. We do it together. We need to practice this Jesus love together. This is why the church exists. This is why we worship together and serve together. This is why we give together and grow together. Maybe this Easter God is calling you to a new form of practicing love. Maybe it is in a Sunday school class or a small group or an outreach ministry.

You have been called to build people up. This starts with the people in your life but it doesn’t end there. It includes your neighbors in person and your neighbors on the internet. It includes how you write comments on people’s social media posts and how you judge people for what they say before talking to them directly.  God doesn’t call us to be righteous posters but to be righteous people who build others up in love no matter what or where we find them. God gives us the freedom to build others up in love. To build others up on love. We don’t need to cut down the tall poppies. We don’t need to tear others down. We don’t need to do any of this alone. We don’t need to be the devil’s martyr. We are already children of God. Love is already there with you. You don’t need to make an addition. You don’t need to remodel yourself. God has built you up in love. Let us work to build up others.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.


title: Love Covers a Multitude of Sins

themes: sin-as-missing-the-mark love-covers-sin sanctification relationship-with-god receiving-grace easter-works-of-love

text:
**Scripture:** 1 Peter 4:8; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Exodus 20:2-3; Revelation 21:1-4; Luke 23:34-43
**Series:** 2021

> A fourth-week Easter sermon in Bee Creek UMC's 'Works of Love' series, preaching 1 Peter 4:8 ('love covers a multitude of sins') in light of 1 Corinthians 13. Opening with a personal story of festering hiking blisters that healed only once uncovered and dried, the sermon argues that sin must be honestly admitted, not ignored. It reframes sin not as a moralistic list of vices but, via the Greek hamartia ('missing the mark') and the priority of the First Commandment, as straying from relationship with God. Distinguishing justification from sanctification, it presents salvation as ongoing transformation toward holiness, and points to Jesus covering and overwhelming sin (Matthew the tax collector, the cross). The call is to admit our need and receive the grace that heals and covers sin, offering abundant life.

**Illustrations:** appalachian-trail-blisters, military-triage-origin, wild-pacific-crest-trail, stranded-lake-travis, calypso-apocalypse-wordplay, jesus-covers-sins-examples

---

I've shared a little bit about how I hiked after college. I tried to hike, hiking a lot during my life, but especially that time after college, when I took a bus from Austin to Maine, I started walking South and I had a lot of gear that first few weeks. And one of the gear I had was like really good, solid hiking boots. They were good boots. I've worn them in. Um, they were solid.
They were designed for kind of like heavy duty, trucking carrying a lot of stuff going, going back, not kind of a low mileage time. Whereas going through all through hiking on the Appalachian trail is very light. You want to stay light. You have to have high mileage, low weight, especially in the Appalachian trail, as opposed to like the Pacific crest trail where you're like the movie wild takes place.
There's a lot of places to get supplies, so you don't need to carry everything. There's a lot of places to get water, unlike hiking in Texas where, which I might have noticed I had done research before heading out, but I'd been backpacking before. So I took my backpack full of gear, in the first week, through this area of Maine called the hundred mile wilderness. And it might as well have been called the hundred mile swamp. It was a swamp. I went through and forded a few rivers and walked probably 20 miles on bog logs, which are logs on a bog: it's bog log.
And they keep you from sinking into mud, but they are as slick as ice. And so I slipped a lot and my feet fell in the water a lot. And you know, waterproof boots are great, they keep the water outside your boot, but if water gets in, they keep the water inside your boot as well. So a series of blisters developed over that first week on my heels. They were not comfortable. When I first noticed them, I was 50 miles away from any place I could go. There was nothing I could do. And so I had only been a little food, a limited amount of water.
I was able to walk. I did the basic triage, the word triage comes from military medicine in the 19th century. And it's like, yeah, there's three options for a wounded person. “Can they walk? Can they not walk? Are they dead?” So I checked myself in order: Are you mobile? Are you alive? Um, in this kind of checking order and I was able to triage myself. Okay. I'm alive. Good. All right. I guess I can move good. Okay. I guess, then, I have to move. So I kept going and the blisters got bigger. You know, when you have a blister that's bloody bleeding or any kind of wound, there is an option to ignore it.
I mean, you know, if I had a cut on my arm, I could, you know, completely ignore it and move on. I could, I could cover it up and ignore it. I could bandage it and try not to think about it, but that's not, it's not going to get any better. If I do that, what ended up doing was switching to chacos. I had some chacos for camp shoes, which is also just like a really amateur mistake. Chacos are pretty heavy for sandals, but I started wearing chacos, i was able to dry out the chacos. They didn't irritate the blister and the body healed.
So healing a bleeding, pussing, blister is one thing. How can we heal the sin in our life?
## Series Intro
My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on the works of love on looking at how we can respond to the miracle of Christ's resurrection. In this season of Easter in practical ways, a few weeks ago, we talked about how love builds up that love is both the foundation and what builds up in people. And that when we see others as children of God, when we see that love is already present, that we can act differently and build up that level.
We can see ourselves already as children of God. And we see that love is already present in us. We can build up. And last week, two weeks ago, we talked about how love believes all things believes all because Jesus believes in us. Jesus believes all things. Jesus, doesn't dismiss you no matter what you have done, or no matter where you have God, Jesus believes last week.
Pastor Matt talked about how hope, love, hopes all.
And this week we're talking about how love covers a multitude of sins. These are verbs around love with love. Does this passage comes from first Peter, but it feels with the flow and the logic of first Corinthians 13 love for love covers a multitude of sin.
Some translations happen love for canvas multitude or love hides. A multitude. The word in Greek is literally color. I love covers a multitude of sense, but it's more than a multiage it's a crowd. It's the same word as crowd and playfulness. If there's a crowd out there, there's a playfulness here to listen to me, crypto, like the music Calypso, doesn't really similar as well as you, but, but Calypso, we there's a version of it that is very familiar with us apocalypse Apocalypto.
So Apocalypto means to uncover something. The apocalypse of John is the uncovering of Christ's true plan for all of creation. And the apocalypse is not the four horsemen. Uh, it's what happens at the end of the book of revelation. It's an apt behold. I saw a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem descending, and there was no more reaping or crying nor gnashing of teeth.
That's the apocalypse here in first, Peter four is the Calypso CallLoop plank.
Love covers a crowd I've sent. We need to start with what a sin is. And this is something I know our confirmation crew has talked about. And it's one of those things that, you know, it's really good to, to clarify about because sin is a word that may or may not be used in popular parlance, but it's one of those words that we, most of us think we have a sense of when more often than not are use in English of sin is very different from its use in Greek or in Hebrew.
Okay. SIM is commonly thought of as just like bad things like sin or faults or things you don't want to do vices.
So if the language of vice is very, um, personal focuses on what are the things I do, what are things I shouldn't do? Um, it's all about me. And this is, you know, a lot of societies are based around this. We have laws of individual behavior and action. It's like, it's some ways it's in commandments are read in this fashion, do this, don't do that. You know, honor your mother and father don't bear false witness.
Don't kill don't steal. Don't covet, don't commit adultery fees, these kinds of things. But what that view of the temple, Mrs is what the first commandment is. The first commandment has nothing to do with me or you.
That is so important that God's first command to Moses and to the people from Mount Sinai had nothing to do with the people. It had nothing to do with what they could do. It was not about their moral behavior. Is that I am the Lord. Your God. Sure. I have no other gods before me. That comes second. And that's important. I would have other guides don't have idols, but the first command is I am Lord God.
When we talk about sin, we need to start with, Oh God, yes. Sin is not this kind of list of legal parameter under which we can best send it's about our relationship with God. Hamachi on the pretty court for sin is a, um, an archery term is a term used when you miss the target. And so if you're pulling, shooting an arrow and you don't hit the target, you commit Marty, Marty on, you said it was used and appropriated by the church to refer to ways in which we stray from the path of God.
But it can only make sense in the context of who God is, what God offers before us. There's no such thing as a sin apart from relationship with God.
In fact, one of the things Paul emphasizes.
Is that we only know.
Our sin because of our knowledge of God. After we become aware of God's presence and existence, then we become aware of the distance between ourselves and God.
And then became aware that we cannot on our own bridge, that Gulf between ourselves and God. That's why we need grace and hold her to do that.
No.
And the early church and throughout history, there's been like different emphases on where the grace impacts us for instance, and after the reformation and for many, most Protestant churches, the last 500 years salvation, what salvation means what to say? It means that I am saved, that you are saved, has to do with this. What's called justification, the doctrine of justification and that what Christ does in the atonement and how the resurrection functions for us.
And so that is what for the past 500 years ago, the key emphasis on justification others before many, especially in the early part of the church, salvation had to do with sanctification, which means being made Holy, being made more Christ like simplification is about the transformation God continues to do in us.
Salvation is about this transformation of going from being a.
Child of sin.
Holiness. What it means to be a child of sin does not mean to be a person of debauchery or whatever cultural assumptions are it about Someone who is strain? Sure love God has for us and the purpose God has for us.
In this life.
Again, it's about our relationship with God. Primarily.
Now we get back to this issue for the scripture for today, but love covers a crowd of sins. Love covers a multitude of.
Sam love covers it up.
Like I covered up my Buster when love covers something up,.
Instead of it, continuing to fester, if feels Sandy is healed. Yes. Sin and love do not mix. If we are to understand sin is straight from God. We are to understand, love as connecting with God. It's following God. Love is seeing as God sees us having the eyes of God, the heart of God in our lives to love someone truly is to see them as God sees them as AP love it.
Not as this object set, um, to be used for us and for our advantage. Other people whom we love are not just like supporting actors in the movie of our life. They are individual agents with, with will and purpose.
And we see how love lives and what love does most purely in the life of Jesus Christ. This is how love lives. The God who is love lives in this way. And we have many examples in the life of Jesus, of the love of Christ covering a multitude of sins. It's not just for keeping them, but covering them over, whelming them Christ.
Doesn't just forgive sins. Like you forgive a car loan and move on with your life Christ overwhelmed sin. We see this in the example of this trial, instead of grand standing in front of pilot, inherit Christ before welcomes them with love. We see on the cross with Beretta.
Price for realms him with love. He says today you shall be with me in paradise. He says, father, forgive them for, they don't know what they do. When Jesus comes to the adulterous woman at the well, he doesn't see her as an adulterous woman, but a woman. Oh, well, his vision is not on sin, but beyond sin. And in that covers, it happened when he is calling the disciples.
He calls Matthew, the tax collector covers his sin. When he says to today, I am going to your house.
That's the thing.
About Jesus and about love is love. Doesn't look past sin nor said it covers sin until it is no more. Jesus literally loves the sin out of the people. I think again, we need to understand the sin, not in this moralistic way, but in the specific way of connection and relationship with God and ways that people stray And that sin is not just a thing that other people do, but it is the way that we turn and stretch.
From God.
And if we refuse to admit it, if we refuse to admit those ways that we turn away from God, those ways that we miss the Mark, we'll not be able to receive the overwhelming love of Jesus Christ. That covers the crowd of our sins. That covers the multitude of our sins. If we fixate on salvation as purely this thing that happened when we said we were saved, we're going to miss out on the salvation that continues to be offered this day and each day to you and to me,.
Okay,.
To cover the multitude of our sins, not to leave us in the same place, but to bring us cross the shore. I've used this analogy before, but it's so clear and helpful to me, bears repeating God, doesn't come to us as if we are stranded in the middle of Lake Travis and say, how's it going? Need any help? And we say, yes, cut. Doesn't just go away after meeting us there, God, hasn't come around and say like, Oh wow.
It looks like you need something. And then leave. God comes, God doesn't come to us. Like, you know, alleviate or a priest thinking, Oh, I'd love to help better things to do while we're flailing around in the middle of the water. But if we denied, if we say no, I'm fine. I'm good. I got it. No worries. I got to cover it. If we refuse to receive the help of God's mercy, we are the ones who suffer.
If God is reaching as a handout to pick us up and we refuse to grab it because we refuse to admit we've missed the Mark. We are, the ones was that for the season of Easter.
If we are going to accept God's grace and God's love and admit, we must admit that we need God's grace and God's love. And then we can receive the love that covers a multitude of sins. Then we can receive, I love that covers and Smothers sin that heals or sin the heels, the ways that have strayed from God, so that we can see rightly and see God's love rightly and see ourselves rightly as children of God, that we can be honest with ourselves, with our others is humility and righteousness.
And that that is possible for us. It is possible for you to become more. Holy. It is possible for me to become more. Holy. This is not just for other people. It's not just for people who are already born. Holy. Think about someone in your life who you admire and you respect someone who's shown courage, thoughtfulness. Well, good. They have points to the God who is love and what good they have comes from the God who has left and what good they have that came to them can be yours.
Love covers a multitude of sentence and offers life abundant, the father and the son and the Holy spirit. Amen.
I've shared a little bit about how I hiked after college. I tried to hike, hiking a lot during my life, but especially that time after college, when I took a bus from Austin to Maine, I started walking South and I had a lot of gear that first few weeks. And one of the gear I had was like really good, solid hiking boots. They were good boots. I've worn them in. Um, they were solid.
They were designed for kind of like heavy duty, trucking carrying a lot of stuff going, going back, not kind of a low mileage time. Whereas going through all through hiking on the Appalachian trail is very light. You want to stay light. You have to have high mileage, low weight, especially in the Appalachian trail, as opposed to like the Pacific crest trail where you're like the movie wild takes place.
And, um, it was a lot of places to rehab.
There's a lot of places to get supplies, so you don't need to carry everything. There's a lot of places to get water, so you don't need to carry everything. So I might have noticed I didn't do a ton of research before I'd been backpacking before. So I took my backpack in here. It was not, um, super helpful. I, in the first week it goes through this, this area of Maine called the hundred mile wilderness. And it's basically, I mean, it might as well. You called the a hundred mile swamp. It was a swamp. I went through forehead, cover a few rivers and walked probably 20 miles on bog logs, which are logs on a bog it's bog log.
And they keep you from sinking into mud, but they are not the least slick surface bill ever walk on. And so I slipped a lot and my feet fell in the water a lot. And you know, it's like waterproof boots are great.
They keep the water outside your boot. But if water gets in, they keep the water inside your boot as well. So it developed over that first week was a series of blisters that were not comfortable blisters on the heel, especially. And at first I looked through it, I was, I was 50 miles away from any place I could go. There was nothing I could do. And so I had only been about food, limited amount of water.
I was able to walk. I went, you know, did the basic triage, the standard of triage comes from military medicine in the 19th century. And it's like, yeah, there's three options for a wounded person. Can they walk? Can they not walk? Are they dead? Like these are the three options it's kind of when you're need to technically triaged someone like that's the first question. Can you, are you mobile?
Are you a mobile? Are you alive? Um, in this kind of checking order and I was able to triage myself. Okay. I'm alive. Good. All right. I guess I can move good. Okay. I guess then I have to move well. So I kept going the blisters got bigger in general. You know, when you have a blister that's, that's bloody bleeding or any kind of wound, there is an option to ignore it.
I mean, you know, if I had a cut on my arm, I could, you know, completely ignore it and move on. I could, I could cover it up and ignore it. I could bandage it and try not to think about it, but that's not, it's not going to get any better. If I do that, what ended up doing was I switched to tacos.
And so I had some tacos for camp shoes, which is also just like a really amateur mistake.
Tacos are pretty heavy for sandals. It's like, you know, Crocs are good. They're captures. They're, they're really liked super light. And it's like, it gives your feet space to swell. Cause that's what, after you're walking 20 miles a day, your feet are going to swell. I went from an EA to a 40 after my hike because my, my foot flattened, but I started drinking tacos, able to dry out the tacos. Didn't um, irritate the blister and the body healed the body healed.
So, you know, a bleeding, pissing, blister is one thing. How can we heal the sin in art life?
My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on the works of love on looking at how we can respond to the miracle of Christ's resurrection. In this season of Easter in practical ways, a few weeks ago, we talked about how love builds up that love is both the foundation and what builds up in people. And that when we see others as children of God, when we see that love is already present, that we can act differently and build up that level.
We can see ourselves already as children of God. And we see that love is already present in us. We can build up. And last week, two weeks ago, we talked about how love believes all things believes all because Jesus believes in us. Jesus believes all things. Jesus, doesn't dismiss you no matter what you have done, or no matter where you have God, Jesus believes last week.
Pastor Matt talked about how hope, love, hopes all.
And this week we're talking about how love covers a multitude of sins. These are verbs around love with love. Does this passage comes from first Peter, but it feels with the flow and the logic of first Corinthians 13 love for love covers a multitude of sin.
Some translations happen love for canvas multitude or love hides. A multitude. The word in Greek is literally color. I love covers a multitude of sense, but it's more than a multiage it's a crowd. It's the same word as crowd and playfulness. If there's a crowd out there, there's a playfulness here to listen to me, crypto, like the music Calypso, doesn't really similar as well as you, but, but Calypso, we there's a version of it that is very familiar with us apocalypse Apocalypto.
So Apocalypto means to uncover something. The apocalypse of John is the uncovering of Christ's true plan for all of creation. And the apocalypse is not the four horsemen. Uh, it's what happens at the end of the book of revelation. It's an apt behold. I saw a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem descending, and there was no more reaping or crying nor gnashing of teeth.
That's the apocalypse here in first, Peter four is the Calypso CallLoop plank.
Love covers a crowd I've sent. We need to start with what a sin is. And this is something I know our confirmation crew has talked about. And it's one of those things that, you know, it's really good to, to clarify about because sin is a word that may or may not be used in popular parlance, but it's one of those words that we, most of us think we have a sense of when more often than not are use in English of sin is very different from its use in Greek or in Hebrew.
Okay. SIM is commonly thought of as just like bad things like sin or faults or things you don't want to do vices.
So if the language of vice is very, um, personal focuses on what are the things I do, what are things I shouldn't do? Um, it's all about me. And this is, you know, a lot of societies are based around this. We have laws of individual behavior and action. It's like, it's some ways it's in commandments are read in this fashion, do this, don't do that. You know, honor your mother and father don't bear false witness.
Don't kill don't steal. Don't covet, don't commit adultery fees, these kinds of things. But what that view of the temple, Mrs is what the first commandment is. The first commandment has nothing to do with me or you.
That is so important that God's first command to Moses and to the people from Mount Sinai had nothing to do with the people. It had nothing to do with what they could do. It was not about their moral behavior. Is that I am the Lord. Your God. Sure. I have no other gods before me. That comes second. And that's important. I would have other guides don't have idols, but the first command is I am Lord God.
When we talk about sin, we need to start with, Oh God, yes. Sin is not this kind of list of legal parameter under which we can best send it's about our relationship with God. Hamachi on the pretty court for sin is a, um, an archery term is a term used when you miss the target. And so if you're pulling, shooting an arrow and you don't hit the target, you commit Marty, Marty on, you said it was used and appropriated by the church to refer to ways in which we stray from the path of God.
But it can only make sense in the context of who God is, what God offers before us. There's no such thing as a sin apart from relationship with God.
In fact, one of the things Paul emphasizes.
Is that we only know.
Our sin because of our knowledge of God. After we become aware of God's presence and existence, then we become aware of the distance between ourselves and God.
And then became aware that we cannot on our own bridge, that Gulf between ourselves and God. That's why we need grace and hold her to do that.
No.
And the early church and throughout history, there's been like different emphases on where the grace impacts us for instance, and after the reformation and for many, most Protestant churches, the last 500 years salvation, what salvation means what to say? It means that I am saved, that you are saved, has to do with this. What's called justification, the doctrine of justification and that what Christ does in the atonement and how the resurrection functions for us.
And so that is what for the past 500 years ago, the key emphasis on justification others before many, especially in the early part of the church, salvation had to do with sanctification, which means being made Holy, being made more Christ like simplification is about the transformation God continues to do in us.
Salvation is about this transformation of going from being a.
Child of sin.
Holiness. What it means to be a child of sin does not mean to be a person of debauchery or whatever cultural assumptions are it about Someone who is strain? Sure love God has for us and the purpose God has for us.
In this life.
Again, it's about our relationship with God. Primarily.
Now we get back to this issue for the scripture for today, but love covers a crowd of sins. Love covers a multitude of.
Sam love covers it up.
Like I covered up my Buster when love covers something up,.
Instead of it, continuing to fester, if feels Sandy is healed. Yes. Sin and love do not mix. If we are to understand sin is straight from God. We are to understand, love as connecting with God. It's following God. Love is seeing as God sees us having the eyes of God, the heart of God in our lives to love someone truly is to see them as God sees them as AP love it.
Not as this object set, um, to be used for us and for our advantage. Other people whom we love are not just like supporting actors in the movie of our life. They are individual agents with, with will and purpose.
And we see how love lives and what love does most purely in the life of Jesus Christ. This is how love lives. The God who is love lives in this way. And we have many examples in the life of Jesus, of the love of Christ covering a multitude of sins. It's not just for keeping them, but covering them over, whelming them Christ.
Doesn't just forgive sins. Like you forgive a car loan and move on with your life Christ overwhelmed sin. We see this in the example of this trial, instead of grand standing in front of pilot, inherit Christ before welcomes them with love. We see on the cross with Beretta.
Price for realms him with love. He says today you shall be with me in paradise. He says, father, forgive them for, they don't know what they do. When Jesus comes to the adulterous woman at the well, he doesn't see her as an adulterous woman, but a woman. Oh, well, his vision is not on sin, but beyond sin. And in that covers, it happened when he is calling the disciples.
He calls Matthew, the tax collector covers his sin. When he says to today, I am going to your house.
That's the thing.
About Jesus and about love is love. Doesn't look past sin nor said it covers sin until it is no more. Jesus literally loves the sin out of the people. I think again, we need to understand the sin, not in this moralistic way, but in the specific way of connection and relationship with God and ways that people stray And that sin is not just a thing that other people do, but it is the way that we turn and stretch.
From God.
And if we refuse to admit it, if we refuse to admit those ways that we turn away from God, those ways that we miss the Mark, we'll not be able to receive the overwhelming love of Jesus Christ. That covers the crowd of our sins. That covers the multitude of our sins. If we fixate on salvation as purely this thing that happened when we said we were saved, we're going to miss out on the salvation that continues to be offered this day and each day to you and to me,.
Okay,.
To cover the multitude of our sins, not to leave us in the same place, but to bring us cross the shore. I've used this analogy before, but it's so clear and helpful to me, bears repeating God, doesn't come to us as if we are stranded in the middle of Lake Travis and say, how's it going? Need any help? And we say, yes, cut. Doesn't just go away after meeting us there, God, hasn't come around and say like, Oh wow.
It looks like you need something. And then leave. God comes, God doesn't come to us. Like, you know, alleviate or a priest thinking, Oh, I'd love to help better things to do while we're flailing around in the middle of the water. But if we denied, if we say no, I'm fine. I'm good. I got it. No worries. I got to cover it. If we refuse to receive the help of God's mercy, we are the ones who suffer.
If God is reaching as a handout to pick us up and we refuse to grab it because we refuse to admit we've missed the Mark. We are, the ones was that for the season of Easter.
If we are going to accept God's grace and God's love and admit, we must admit that we need God's grace and God's love. And then we can receive the love that covers a multitude of sins. Then we can receive, I love that covers and Smothers sin that heals or sin the heels, the ways that have strayed from God, so that we can see rightly and see God's love rightly and see ourselves rightly as children of God, that we can be honest with ourselves, with our others is humility and righteousness.
And that that is possible for us. It is possible for you to become more. Holy. It is possible for me to become more. Holy. This is not just for other people. It's not just for people who are already born. Holy. Think about someone in your life who you admire and you respect someone who's shown courage, thoughtfulness. Well, good. They have points to the God who is love and what good they have comes from the God who has left and what good they have that came to them can be yours.
Love covers a multitude of sentence and offers life abundant, the father and the son and the Holy spirit. Amen.