This Sunday and....What is Christianity?

This Sunday, Father's Day, PCF will be leading worship with pastor Kent giving the message. 

Service time is 8:45am, 800 North Main Street Edwardsville

This morning I was reading a book, "The Questions of Jesus" by John Dear, and I read the following:

"The story is told about a prominent reporter who flew to Calcutta to interview Mother Theresa. He followed her on her usual rounds through the streets of Calcutta, where homeless people lie dying each day. Finding some desperate man covered in filth and vomit, she would bend down and greet him as if he were a king. With loving words and gentle hands, she and her sisters would start cleaning him right there on the street, before picking him up and bringing him to her home for the dying. As Mother Theresa washed the vomit and vermin off the face and chest, and legs of a dying man, the reporter watched in horror, appalled that she would go near such filth. "I wouldn't do that for a million dollars," he said. "Neither would I," Mother Theresa answered." p. 35-36 

Please don't stop reading my blog here or you are going to miss my whole point. The reason I included the above story is because I think this type of story gets told way too often, with the point being to make 99.9% of us feel guilty about our place in the world as it relates to Christianity. 

• Most of us are not cleaning vomit off the dying. 
• Most of us are not selling all that we have to feed the poor. 
• Most of us are not giving most of our free time to rock sick babies in hospitals and I could go on and on about what most of us are not doing. But what good would that do other than to alienate more people away from "Christianity." Sometimes I feel alienated from Christianity because of what I hear or read. I have read plenty of "Christian" books over the past three years that made me feel inadequate and guilty. So I ask myself is that a good thing? Will telling me stories that make me feel inadequate and guilty motivate me to be a better Christian? For me, it does not.  

My Christian journey continues daily. I know that I can do better at many things. I do not feel called to sell all my possessions or to move to Calcutta. To be honest I often question my position as a pastor.  Personally, I believe we need people who build very successful businesses who make lots of money. If everyone of us quit our jobs tomorrow to go to Calcutta to help the poor, it would create a whole new disaster. Being a Christian is not easy or simple. It's complex. You have obligations, hopes, dreams, needs, and desires. That is human nature. When it all comes down to it I go back to one sentence found in 1 Corinthians 13. "13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

The greatest of these is Love! There it is. The key! No matter what it is I do, do it with love. 

If you sing in the choir, do it with love!

If you preach the Gospel, do it with love!

If you are talking with someone, anyone, do it with love!

If you are running a business, do it with love!

If you are working for someone, do it with love!

If you give money to a church or organization, do it with love!

If you volunteer to do something, do it with love!  

If you are a neighbor, be a neighbor with love!

If you are a teacher, teach with love!

If you are an attorney, be an attorney filled with love!

If you are a successful business person, be a successful business person with love!

If you are unemployed, be unemployed with love! Because of all the great things we can do, if we do them without love, they are worthless. 

1 Corinthians 13

The Gift of Love

13 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly,[b] but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

See you Sunday, Love, pastor kent