| radical love |
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| Written by Betsy |
| Sunday, 29 March 2009 14:07 |
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Last week, I preached at my campus ministry. The student ministers and campus minister asked me to speak on "gender, sexuality, and sexual orientation." Now obviously I couldn't cover all of those topics in one 15-min message, so I focused on the one issue that I think forces us to think about all those issues. I spoke about homosexuality and the church. Now I think homosexuality is a BIG and important issue in the church. I wish it wasn't the biggest issue in the church and definitely not the most important because Jesus never talks about homosexuality. In fact, the majority of our Scripture does not talk about the issue. Yet somehow, this issue has become a BIG concern for us today. And I think the way we've dealt with it makes it very important today. With regard to this issue, we don't love our neighbors, and Jesus DOES talk about that. We don't really love those who disagree with us because we yell at them or get angry. We don't love our gay neighbors who contantly hear that they shouldn't be full members of the church. In all this, we don't really challenge the world's understanding of love, which Christ did by loving the outcast. Instead, we CREATE outcasts. Jesus came to radically love us, yet we respond to his message sinfully. Let us repent and seek to become better disciples of the one who loved us, even if it means changing our understanding of gender, sexuality, and sexual orientation. This call to love radically comes to us just as directly from Scripture as calls against "homosexual practice." For my message, I chose a Scripture passage from 1 John, which ends "Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us." (4:12, NRSV). |
Comments
Blessings and peace as you and your people navigate how to love their LGBTQ brothers and sisters. Quote
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