Unconditional Love and Change

Over the past few weeks, I have been doing a sermon series on Love. While most likely thought this series was created for Valentine's Day, they are all learning that I had a different idea in mind.

Love. What does love mean to all of us? What does love mean to people that haven't experienced love? Does love look more like violence? Does love scare people? Does love prohibit us from fully experiencing our lives out of fear of what may happen?

The United Methodist Church will face a vote at a special General Conference that starts Feb. 23rd. Bishops, delegates (the people that get to vote), clergy and lay people will gather in St. Louis, MO from all over the world to vote on the issue of human sexuality and the church. This vote has been up for discussion since the 1980's when the world of psychiatric deemed homosexuality was not a mental health disorder. Since then, the church has gone back and forth on the issue. Should they allow gay clergy? Should people of the same-sex get to marry in the church?

I spoke last Sunday on how we become the church in a world that tries to shut the church out. In a world that views the church as negative and in a world that puts people in different boxes based on their race, socio-economic status, gender and who they love.

How do we be the church? The one the first Apostles built? The one that is about change, the love of God and the Good News that Christ brought?

Love

Love

Love

I recently spoke to someone about the one-church plan that is going before the conference. This is the plan that the majority of the Bishops in the church are supporting. It is the plan that allows each local church to decide. It sounds simple enough- you decide what your church is going to do. Yet this plan still brings up questions for a lot of people. How does that work? What church am I suppose to go if I believe ___? Will churches leave? Will people leave our church?

Love

I just keep saying that word over and over again in my head. The church is at a crossroads and what the church does next will define the church for generations to come. Generations that will likely look at us and wonder why this mattered. I look back on giving the women the right to preach and wonder why it took so long- in awe that it took the church over 1950 years to finally make that possible when some of the most powerful people in scripture are...WOMEN! (getting side-tracked...)

So what do we do as a church? How do we keep going?

We love our way through it.

We love God, we love the church, we love our neighbors and we love all of God's people just as God tells us to through God's son, Jesus Christ.

Jesus came to this world to save us from ourselves, to show us what true love is and how to live that out in our everyday lives.

Jesus suffered and was killed at the hands of his own people yet even knowing this would happen he did the work of God. He healed the leper, he prayed with and taught women, he opposed the doings of the scribes and pharisees, he turned over the tables in the temple.

People fought against everything Jesus did and had to say but he stayed strong and went with one message.

Love.

Jesus is the church. Jesus is UNCONDITIONAL LOVE AND CHANGE. Jesus came to this world to change it so that we may all live a life of abundance and know our identity in God as God's beloved children.

Love. That really is the only way.

We continue to love and the church and all of us will get through this, all while knowing we are enough, we are worthy and we are beloved.

-Pastor Ali