Welcome to the First Love Church podcast. This is a collection of Sunday teachings inspired by the revised common lectionary and recorded weekly in Ocala, florida. We've gathered and I want to remind you of something Love is here. Love is already here. God is already here with us. Whatever you have need of this morning, god, who is love, is here with us, and I get to remind us of some things that you may already know, but I remind you this morning that locations have energy and time has memory. So as we come to this place, we are remembering to bring our whole selves, our embodied self, to God and to each other. I remind you that it's your whole self, so that means every part of you, the sad parts of you, the angry parts of you, the frustrated parts of you, every part of you welcomed in God's house. There are things that we do, rituals that are gifted to the Church of Jesus Christ to retell a story, so that we would, together, tell the stories that shape us and remind us of things and there's things all around you and they, even if you're not aware of it, tell you a story.
Speaker 1:In this particular Church congregation, in the sanctuary, we have padded chairs that are very modern and we have pews that are very old. In fact these pews we know are over 150 years old. They're from a church in Oklahoma. They were doing a redo and we found out that they had pews and they were willing to give it to us. And so I said to Dennis would you please rent a truck and would you please go up there and would you get all of those heavy pews and would you bring them back? And then we brought them back and Dennis had them all in here and they were by themselves and I just sat down on one.
Speaker 1:I thought I imagine all of the mothers who have sat in these pews and prayed for children. I imagine all the grandparents who sat in these pews and prayed. I imagined all the desperate people who came to church hoping that this would be a connection with the divine. I imagined all the families and children who thought the services were way too long, or children who wanted to leave and yet their parents said stay.
Speaker 1:I imagined all of the people who came and said we are here to meet with God and so, as we gather in this place, I remind you that this place is not the church Beloved. You are the church. You are the dwelling place of the Almighty God in all of God's goodness lives in you. But when we gather together, there is a light that is given to us, there is a hope that is remembered and there is a faith. We enter into an ancient faith, an eternal current. Before the world was formed, god had you in mind and God had settled on you to be the object of God's affection, that you would be made whole and holy by God's love. Wholeness, oneness has always been the intention of God. That all things would be restored and that we would be restored into relationship with God. Jesus said this. This is what eternal life is that you would know the Father. Eternal life is that you would come home to God who lives in us, who desires and made this beautiful world, and so I'm excited today to be able to share with you the scriptures and to be able to rehearse them and recount them and allow the Holy Spirit to reanimate them.
Speaker 1:For those of you who have been in church for a while, or even if you just listen to things on your app, I think sometimes it's very easy for us, when we hear a particular passage, to say, oh, I've heard that one. And so we encourage you this morning to open the eyes of your heart, as the apostle Paul tells us. And sometimes people have issue, maybe, with wondering how do you open the eyes of your heart? And I will tell you, it is an act of spirit. It is an act of surrender. The Holy Spirit, who is among us, allows us to see in such a way that we could not see without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And so, as we go to the text this morning, I remind you of this good plan that the written scriptures are to us a witness of Jesus, who is God. And Jesus, who is with us, said this is what it looks like to live in human flourishing not just that you beloved, would flourish, but that the world would flourish, that God's kingdom.
Speaker 1:We prayed together a prayer with the ancients, with those who have gone before us, with the disciples. We prayed may your kingdom come. May your will be done on the earth as it is in heaven. What would our city look like if heaven came here to Ocala? That's a very hopeful thought beloved. But I'll tell you, we're assured that it's not here yet. I've looked around this morning and I see evidence that God is at work, but I also see evidence that more resurrection is needed. And so, as we gather together, we do this intentionally to say what is it like for us, as the people of God, to be formed by divine love? What does it look like for us, as the family of God, to learn how to love each other? What does it look like for us, as the children of God, to understand what it looks like to love ourselves? Because we are made in the image of God and we are made in the image of the divine, and Jesus is praying for us In John, chapter 17,. Jesus prays this Father, make them one, as you and I are one. Make us one. So this intention, this singleness, this oneness is what Jesus is praying, and so I pray that with you this morning, for your families. May Jesus make you one Over our nation. May Jesus make us one Over the world. May Jesus make us one. May what Jesus is praying for us absolutely come true. I'm so grateful for the worship that we are able to do together.
Speaker 1:Sometimes the singing of songs is not just the singing of songs. There are some beautiful harmonies and frequencies, but the words of those songs can build faith in us, they can build hope, and one of the things that they do for us is actually intentionally bring unity to a group of people. If you've ever watched like soccer or I know they call it football, but I'm here, so I'm calling it soccer and a team will sing a song and it will unify them, it'll be like, yes, this is who we are and that's really what we're doing in our worship. We're reminding ourselves it is well when we come here and we've barely gotten ourselves out of bed because we've suffered with depression all week or we heard a bad news or life is just not going the way we wanted to, and we hear a song that reminds us it'll be well.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, when you sing, you can't even sing. You just kind of have to hear the voices around you and believe that it's true. And that's one of the reasons why being a part of a local community is so essential, because sometimes, when you can't believe the truth, you need someone who loves you, who will believe it for you, and you keep showing up and you allow their good test and wanting to tell you that beloved love is what matters and love wins. And there is hope in that and in the singing of songs and in the worship, and we made a declaration this morning together. We said we're here to encounter the sacred, and we do that many different ways. We encounter the sacred through nature.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you noticed this this morning, but all of nature was testifying of abundance, of goodness, of generosity, of hope. Nature was really close to me this morning, but it was really hot. I don't know if you noticed that, but nature was all up next to me and I was trying to find something to be so grateful for, and it was hard, and so I quickly got from one outside area to an inside area where there was air conditioning, and I was grateful that nature was kept outdoors, and so that is one of the things that I was grateful for. But there are practices, gratitude practices, that lift us into a beautiful place, and I wanna encourage you in this ordinary time that you would allow poetry to speak of God for you. Sometimes the poets can speak in such a way that they reach our jugular, and if you say, well, poetry is not for me, I just remind you, the scriptures that we use are one third poetry, and so we should allow the poetry to actually allow us to learn how to interpret the text, how to engage the text and even how to engage another part of ourselves that often we can't, that very non-literal part, and so I encourage you during this time to allow poetry. Maybe you have favorite poetry, but we'll be posting some poetry on the Facebook page and I just wanna encourage you to engage that and allow goodness and mercy to surround you.
Speaker 1:I wanna read to us this morning from Hebrews, chapter 13, verse 16. Do not neglect doing good and generosity, for God is pleased with such sacrifices. Don't neglect it. That means many times. We did it one time or two times or for a while, and then we've given up on it and beloved. We cannot give up on generosity. It is the hope for the world that we would become generous, just like God is generous, that we would become rich and good works, and this is the hope for the world again, that love would be seen in our actions. You can give as you desire, as you choose, as the Lord leaves you, but you can give online, but you can give in the boxes or you can say this is my hope, that I'm gonna practice a generosity, a lifestyle of giving. I am so grateful for the text today in 1st John, chapter four, verse seven through 16.
Speaker 1:I will tell you that ever since I was a little bitty person, I have this particular verse, two of them, memorized, and it's easy for me because I know a little song. Ask me afterwards I'll sing it to you. You could learn it and never forget the verses. They're good, but the song sounds like a children's song. But I'm not a child anymore and I still remember the verses.
Speaker 1:But let me read to you this morning from the gospel, I'm sorry, from the letter from John who, according to legend and what we believe, these are letters of John, who is the disciple of Jesus, and he is a very old man at this point In fact people believe he's in his 90s and in fact sometimes he is not physically able. He is so weak he cannot actually walk himself to the gatherings. And so his disciples, his people, would actually carry him and they would sit at his feet and they would say things like tell us about Jesus, and they would ask questions and they would say things like what is important, and over and over again in this particular letter you will hear it. But he keeps repeating and reminding love, beloved, beloved children, and he calls us this family name. It's about love. Love is all that matters and God is love In this chapter.
Speaker 1:We won't read the entire thing, but in this chapter he says God is love, god is love, god is love, and he's reminding us this is essential, beloved on how we understand the world, how we understand ourselves that we would understand that God is love. So, here in the text this morning, I'm asking that the Holy Spirit would enliven you, would allow you to see things that perhaps you hadn't seen before. And even if you've already seen it, I'll pray with the apostle who prays let the Holy Spirit seal it in you. May you be so assured of your belonging and your love and your worth today. May the Holy Spirit seal that in you. Dear friends, let us continue to love one another Again. Continue Over and over again, we're admonished continue, keep up the faith, do this. Continue in love, continue in generosity. Why? Because very often we try things and it doesn't work out the way that we expected them to and we give up. And this is the hope of our faith that we would remain until the very end, that we would all love to so transform us that it would strengthen us to be people who could go to the end of our lives greater in love with the world, with each other and with ourselves than when we even began. Let us continue in love one another, for love comes from God.
Speaker 1:Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. This part is essential beloved. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. John is affirming to us this beautiful truth that God reveals God's self in many different ways. And John is saying listen, if you've heard the honey now, that is a reference to us talking the past three weeks but if you've sensed the spirit of God, if you have received love beloved, that's from God, and whether you knew it or not maybe you didn't have a language for it, maybe someone else told you it was something else, but beloved. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. Anyone who does not love does not know God. This is at the place where usually I'm saying Lord, have mercy, christ, have mercy, lord, have mercy, because with my mouth I profess that I am a follower, that I am a seeker, that I am a person who wants to encounter God and really this verse is reminding me. In any area of my life that I do not love, that is an area where I do not know God, because God is love.
Speaker 1:We pause here for a moment to thank you for joining us today. If you're finding this episode meaningful, would you take a moment to share it with a friend? This podcast is made possible thanks to the generosity of people just like you. If you would like to support the ongoing work of First Love Church and the continued work of our podcast, visit us online at firstlovechurchorg, reminding you to like, follow and subscribe.
Speaker 1:God showed us how much he loved us by sending his one and only son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. I love this part in John because he's already told us this, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him would have eternal life, for God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn the world, but that the world, through Jesus, might be saved. This is the same author who's at the end of his life and who's saying God showed us how much God loved us by sending his one and only son into the world so that we might have eternal life Again, based on what the author tells us. It's not a future life, it's this invitation to God, life right now, the presence of divine love with us right now. This is essential to us because divine love can do no other than make whole. That is the essence of divine love. It is restorative, it is full of resurrection, life, and anytime we encounter this divine love, we can trust that there is transformation happening, that we are being made whole, and that is so much hope.
Speaker 1:God's love, as I have founded and as poets have named it, and as prophets have told us, is unruly, and God's love is completely unmanageable and will not fit into the containers that we demand it stay in. God's love overflows and God's love creeps into all of our areas of control. God's love expands, love only ever expands, and it is getting bigger and bigger and beloved. This is the invitation that we, as the people of God, would enter into, this kind of divine love, and that we would be up to the same things that Jesus is up to, which is the restoration of the whole world. What does this mean on a practical level? Because this is beautiful if you think about it. But what does this mean in your marriage? What does it mean when you're alone and it's your thoughts? What does it mean when you enter the wild silence and you'd rather just fill it with your phone or distraction than listen to what spirit may offer this divine love? It dwells in this unbearable wholeness of our being, divine love sealed by the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:I want to remind you that divine love is beyond what we could imagine or we could construct. We can't even imagine how deep this love is. In fact, the apostle Paul says this. I hope that you know. First of all, let your roots grow down deep into the soil of God's love, but then he prays. I want you to know this, as all God's people should, how wide and how deep the love of God actually is. We cannot push the boundaries of God's love. There is nothing that we can do to make God unlove us. We are ones deeply loved. Love has empowered life from the very beginning, and love promises to stay forever. Love promises to stay forever. You will not be abandoned by love. There is hope for us in the practice of allowing the spirit to ignite our imaginations.
Speaker 1:What would it look like for you to love yourself the way that God loves you. How could you love your neighbor if you loved them the way that God loves them? How would you love your children and your grandchildren and other people's children, other people's children who misbehave and other people's children who don't follow rules and other people's children who are sticky and touch your things? Yes, somebody said oh, how about if God's love just spilled over onto all the sticky children and allowed us to see each other with eyes anew? This is real love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. This is real love.
Speaker 1:One of the problems that I have in particular with the English language is that we use the word love for many things. We love pizza and we love our dogs and we love these shoes and we love that show and we love each other and the meaning kind of gets lost. And so the apostle says this to us because maybe in his days he'd be like you love lentils and you love olive oil and you love leather, and I don't know what it was, but he was distracted. I'm sure it's. So he's reminding us. No, no, no, this is real love. It's not just our day this has been happening since humanity that we forgot what real love is, and this morning I would like to redefine it for you.
Speaker 1:Real love is this divine love that is completely self-emptying. It is canosis. It is giving away, giving away of yourself and of the love. But here is the other part. Here is the part that becomes you almost have to rely on the poets to tell you how this actually works. But at the same time that you are giving love away, the source of love, god, is infilling you.
Speaker 1:And so there is this practice of our engagement with the Holy Spirit that, as we empty ourselves out for someone, allowing the infilling of the Spirit to refill us, because isn't that the reason why we would ever hold back? I mean, I'm pouring 19 glasses of water and I'm thinking by about 15, there's not gonna be enough, or I hope they don't take them and I gotta go back to number one by the time I get you know. So we're always measuring. Is there enough Beloved? There is enough love. There is enough love for you and every person. There is enough love for every person you will meet, for every person that has ever been. There is enough love and there is an invitation into this divine understanding that, as we empty ourselves in love, that we would allow the Spirit to refill us, that this connection with real love would be you don't have to give all the love away and now you're all dried up and left without, but that you give love away and that immediately you are refilled, because in that practice of giving it away, you are practicing what God practices, you are connecting with God's own source. From the moment you surrender, if you will allow, god's Spirit will refill you, and refill you to overflowing, so that your container expands, so that you can receive more love, so that you can give more love. And this is the circle that we're invited into, this dance of the divine, this Father, son and Spirit. We're invited into this kind of love Beloved. This is what changes the world, this is what transforms us.
Speaker 1:Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. Well, we surely ought to, but we don't. I mean, I know this verse, I've read it since I was a little girl. We surely ought to love each other. Well, I'll love you when you stop behaving like that or stop doing that. I'll love you when you get it together, or when you repent or when you've done enough penance, so I can see that you're really sorry and you change. No, beloved, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other, and I remind you of this truth Love is not just a sentiment, love is an action.
Speaker 1:Love is the way that we look at the world. Love is allowing the eyes of our heart to open so that when we see the world, we are not cynical and we are not disappointed and sad, but we can see the world with the light that is in us and we can show love and we can have hope amongst disappointment in times of terror. We are the people that are connected to love and so we can live differently, in peace, in the peace of knowing that love wins. Beloved love wins. It is only love that is eternal. Everything else will pass away, but love remains. No one has ever seen God, but if we love each other, god lives in us and his love is brought to full expression of us. This is the hope for all of us that in the way that I love you and in the way that you love me, god is seen among us. In the way that I love my neighbor, in the way that I love the public's cashier, in the way that I love the Aldi cashier, in the way that I love whatever cashier beloved.
Speaker 1:Let's not put vegetables at the bottom of heavy things, just out there, so that if there's something practical, fresh broccoli does not go underneath hard frozen things, just beloved. Let's love one another. Let's love the broccoli, let's treat each other with respect and let's again the scripture says here forgive and offense. So I have to just get past the fact that I chose a broccoli that was so nice. It looked beautiful, it was like all round, and then I thought how nice it was going to be on the plates. And then do you know what that person did? It was flattened. I might as well have frozen broccoli. It was flattened, flattened, flattened, like we had taken a rolling pin and just rolled it out. Beloved. Let us love one another.
Speaker 1:I looked at that and immediately I was disgusted. I'm serious, I will confess my sins and you can forgive me, but I took it out of the bag and I was like, really, do you know? Some farmer planted this, somebody harvested this and I blessed them. And if you don't, this should be a practice for all of us. We should bless the people that grow the food for us. We should so connect with the abundance and bless them. But then not only did the farmer planted, and somebody gathered it, and then somebody trucked it to the publics and then somebody some really nice publics guy took it and put it very nicely here. Now I'm thinking about 10 people at least touch this and it managed to be beautiful. And how did the one person that banked my groceries Okay, this is intensely practical and this is the kind of place that love rules beloved I was either going to be really aggravated that that broccoli made it it was like already predigested, I mean, we didn't even have to chew it.
Speaker 1:It was so flat, it was awful, and we can be angry at that or we can bless that. Now I have learned to bless with a little bit of cynicism, and I'm sure that the Lord will. It'll all come out in the wash. God will bless it out. So this is how I work it out, at least now, in this condition, and maybe in 25 years or more I'll be able to bless without the little bit. So here's how I bless.
Speaker 1:When I saw that, I was so upset, I had plans beloved, and that's really where the difficult time comes. We have expectations, not just for broccoli. We have expectations for people, we have expectations for the world. We have expectations for our politicians, we have expectations for the man who comes and collects the garbage. We have expectations and when our expectations aren't met, I think that's where hell is right, there it comes in.
Speaker 1:So I saw this broccoli in this terrible condition. I would have never chosen that broccoli and I would not have paid the price. I paid for that in that condition and I picked it up and I said I thank you for the broccoli, thank you for the nourishment that it will be for our family, because that's what I intended it for. We weren't making an arrangement with it. We were going to chew it up with our own teeth. I mean, it was going to be smashed anyway, but I was going to present it and I was going to be the good mother. You know, here's a lot of expectation behind groceries. I don't know if that happens for you.
Speaker 1:I saw this broccoli and I said I bless the man who put this at the bottom of the bag and thought heavy things should go on top of it. I bless him to have revelation. I bless him to be able to play Tetris. I bless him to be whatever you need to keep things separate and in order. And so, while I did bless him you hear the cynicism, right that's my expectation that you would do it the way that I want to. But I want to tell you something. Love releases us from that.
Speaker 1:So first, when I had all the you know foolishness, bless him and may he. This started years ago when I started driving and people started cutting me off in traffic and I thought it can either be angry about this or I can bless you. So this is how I did it I bless you and I teach you to it. May the Lord teach you to drive. I don't know who taught you to drive, because it's not right, but may the Lord teach you to drive. And so that has been a mantra for me for so long the Lord bless you and teach you to drive. That gave me hope because I recognized, you know, what I thought was your inappropriate behavior, which was cutting me off, but I still bless you.
Speaker 1:But I blessed the man who put the broccoli at the bottom, and we all know that's wrong. I blessed him in his wrongness and then I remembered how many things I do that's wrong. I know better, beloved, and sometimes I'm busy and I'm short and I'm not patient. And this is the hope for us that in remembering that God loved us, staying in love, blessing those who disappoint us, blessing ourselves when we disappoint ourselves. So I looked at the broccoli and I thought this is not what I wanted. This is what I got. May the Lord bless it, may that man be blessed and may I be blessed. For how many times I am not what somebody thought I was. I do not have to stay in shame, but I can receive the blessing of love and allow myself to enjoy what I have, which is flattened, smashed broccoli. I put a lot of olive oil, salt and garlic on it and it was delicious. Beloved, nobody understood the terror that had been done to me, but we can bless it and we can live differently if we live in love.
Speaker 1:God lives in us and his love is brought to full expression in us, and God has given us his spirit as proof that we live in him and God in us. We talk a lot about the Holy Spirit here because it is the source of life to us. The Holy Spirit is wisdom, the Holy Spirit is God, and I know that often we separate things like God and Jesus and spirit, but they are one. It is God who is love, and Spirit of God comes and seals us in. That love reminds us of this love, and God is saying when the Spirit is in you, the Spirit will testify to you, you'll know, you'll hear the sound of love and you'll recognize it. You'll hear the sound of God, god's voice, and you will recognize it because it's love. Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify, that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Oh, beloved, this is for the whole world. It's for you and me, yes, it's for Ocala. Yes, but this is for the whole world and not just for the people beloved. It is for everything that God made.
Speaker 1:I was watching and praying and asking for mercy on that island in Hawaii with those terrible fires, but praying even a blessing over the earth that we'll have to recover from that terrible scorching and there is for us a hope that God will make all things well. All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them and they live in God. This verse has incredible opportunities for unity All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God. Have God living in them. Not just people who think like us, who live in our zip code or who vote the way that we do. This is an understanding that God is saying that love wants to expand the way that we enter the world, how we acknowledge love's presence in the world, but all who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them and they live in God, and we know how much God loves us. Do we, though? This is a prayer for us. May we know how much God loves us and may we know with the eyes of our heart, because sometimes our brain gets in the way, because our brain holds lists of things that we've done that are unlovable.
Speaker 1:Love keeps no record of wrong. My brain is not very loving toward love. My brain is not very loving toward me. I don't know if your brain is toward you, and that's why, if we surrender to spirit and allow the eyes of our heart to open, we will know. We will learn, we will be expanding in our knowing of how much God loves us and we have put our trust in his love. This verse would be better for me. I'm currently trying to put my trust in his love Over and over again, and this is beloved. What the practice is is returning to love. When our thoughts take us down a path that is not whole, or loving that, we would quick turn back to love, turn back to all my hope is. Trust is in that God loves me, that I am one deeply loved by God, not when I get it together, not when I've done what is right, not when I've met someone else's expectations, but right now, as I am fully loved, fully worthy of God's presence. God is love, beloved God is love. I know that you know that you came here this morning, but I am here to testify with you. God is love. God's love is bigger. God's love is more expansive. God's love is more inclusive. God's love is unruly and it is creative and beloved. It was creating in the beginning and spirit is still creating now, and we are invited into the life of spirit, which is into the life of love. All who live in love live in God.
Speaker 1:Thomas reminded us this morning that we're in the season, in the Christian calendar, of ordinary time, and ordinary time is the time when we practice the sacred in our lives, without big fanfare, without extravagant music, without it's the nitty gritty, it's the washing and peeling of potatoes that you sense the presence of God.
Speaker 1:It's the brushing of the teeth and the repetitive things that we do over and over again and they feel like mundane and we say to ourselves is this all there is Beloved? Everything we do, we do in the presence of the sacred and everything we do can be done in love and in this connection to God. God is love and all who live in God live in love and God lives in them. Beloved. I testify to you this morning by the authority and in the service of love. God is in you, love is in you, and it is our responsibility to open our lives to the love that has been shed abroad. The apostle Paul says love has already been shed abroad, like everywhere in your life, by the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit empowering us to be people who live in love. We hope you've enjoyed this week's sermon. If you would like more information about us, visit us online at firstlovechurchorg.