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Thursday, May 21, 2009
Love-Filled Faith
Psalm 98; John 15:9-17
My minister friend Sarah Reyes Gibbs and I have a friendly little rivalry going on about our new grandchildren. My Mateo is five months old; her Maribel is four months old. Our Facebook pages abound with photos and captions and gentle outbursts of grandparental pride and joy. An objective observer might conclude we're more than a bit beside ourselves.
On Mother's Day, at just about the same time and about ten miles apart, we baptized those two kids into Christ's community amidst great celebration -- to say nothing of pastoral levitation. And our Facebook conversation duly recorded the fact in the annals of cyberhistory.
A week later I found the perfect opportunity to refer back to those joyous baptisms in my sermon on Jesus' amazing conversation with his disciples in John 15.
The startling thing he tells them is "I'm not calling you my Servants any more; from now on you're my Friends!" Servants they'd been for three years, students of his master teaching, doing their best to soak up and understand what he said and what it meant. Now, suddenly, they're his friends, beneficiaries of his good graces and the objects of his love. Just like that, just because Jesus wanted it that way.
And just at that point, Sarah and Maribel and Mateo and I got to be a living parable in my sermon. It sprang from a lovely Facebook post Sarah put up on the morning after Mother's Day. To hear the words and share the joys, just...
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posted by Jack Buckley at
5:08 PM
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