Title: Love Without Fear
Author: Bob Wickizer
Text: 1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20); Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; 2 Corinthians 4:5-12; Mark 2:23-3:6
Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
I write to you in the pre-dawn quiet of Wednesday morning. I slept well and arose with an unshakable dread of things to come. In twenty-four years as a priest, I never preached an overtly political sermon, and I will do my best to continue that track record. One federal judge complained to me in private that my sermons were too liberal for him to which I replied, "If the Golden Rule is liberal, then perhaps we disagree on definitions."
But now that one political party has eschewed religion in all its forms for a kind of political Woodstock where anything goes in the mud and rain, and the other side has narrowly defined what religion is, and bolted their specific definition onto their platform, I cannot stand silent while everything I have tried to do for God and other people has been blotted off the map in favor of one particular agenda or the other.
I will not tell you how to vote. Never have. Never will. But I am qualified to talk to you about scripture, religion, Jesus, morality, and the intersection of those things with our civic life. That is our focus today.
The first thing we need to note here is the reaction of Jesus. When the Pharisees tried to trip up Jesus on points of the law, Jesus was angered at their hardness of heart. And I know just how he feels.
Jesus told us not to fear far more than he talked about love or all the squishy Hallmark thingswe attribute to Jesus. If we make Jesus into a personal love doll and say on the one hand, we cannot talk about Jesus with others because we might offend them, or on the other hand we dig in and say that this nation was based on Christian principles, both sides have completely missed the mark. Our first requirement is to follow J ...
Author: Bob Wickizer
Text: 1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20); Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; 2 Corinthians 4:5-12; Mark 2:23-3:6
Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
I write to you in the pre-dawn quiet of Wednesday morning. I slept well and arose with an unshakable dread of things to come. In twenty-four years as a priest, I never preached an overtly political sermon, and I will do my best to continue that track record. One federal judge complained to me in private that my sermons were too liberal for him to which I replied, "If the Golden Rule is liberal, then perhaps we disagree on definitions."
But now that one political party has eschewed religion in all its forms for a kind of political Woodstock where anything goes in the mud and rain, and the other side has narrowly defined what religion is, and bolted their specific definition onto their platform, I cannot stand silent while everything I have tried to do for God and other people has been blotted off the map in favor of one particular agenda or the other.
I will not tell you how to vote. Never have. Never will. But I am qualified to talk to you about scripture, religion, Jesus, morality, and the intersection of those things with our civic life. That is our focus today.
The first thing we need to note here is the reaction of Jesus. When the Pharisees tried to trip up Jesus on points of the law, Jesus was angered at their hardness of heart. And I know just how he feels.
Jesus told us not to fear far more than he talked about love or all the squishy Hallmark thingswe attribute to Jesus. If we make Jesus into a personal love doll and say on the one hand, we cannot talk about Jesus with others because we might offend them, or on the other hand we dig in and say that this nation was based on Christian principles, both sides have completely missed the mark. Our first requirement is to follow J ...
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