Speaker 1: Welcome to the First Love Church podcast.
Speaker 1: This is a collection of Sunday teachings inspired by the Revised Common Lectionary and recorded weekly in Ocala, florida.
Speaker 1: We are grateful for this opportunity to be together this week to tell a better story, to rehearse the good news of Jesus, for whatever your week looked like, whatever it was that you were experiencing, I want to remind you this morning that there is a better story, that there is a deeper magic still, that love is eternal, love is the way, and love is what we can count on and how we live our lives.
Speaker 1: And so beloved.
Speaker 1: I am grateful for your presence today.
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for the fact that we're going to rehearse the words of Jesus and we are going to practice telling a better story this week.
Speaker 1: It is again with such joy that I am so grateful to have the opportunity to gather with you, and we are reading from Luke's gospel, chapter 15, and we are reminding ourselves of the story of Jesus.
Speaker 1: In a week where violence meets us, I remind you that there is a higher way, there is a better way, there is a Jesus way.
Speaker 1: Jesus has reminded us that violence does not beget peace.
Speaker 1: Peace only comes through the love of God, and so the invitation for all of us is to turn our hearts toward peace.
Speaker 1: In this first verse, where we meet Jesus, tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach.
Speaker 1: I love this verse and I don't want to just rush on past the fact that Jesus wasn't the one writing this.
Speaker 1: Somebody else did and they had classified people as tax collectors and notorious sinners.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're going to sin, I hope you're a notorious sinner.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just hope that there's some notoriety around it.
Speaker 1: And this is the invitation we have to even start from the very beginning of this story, to listen.
Speaker 1: And I remind you that Jesus not only had Pharisees listen to him, not only had religious people, but everyone came to hear the words of Jesus.
Speaker 1: And so, for those of you who wonder if you belong, yes, yes, you do, because you are part of the notorious sinners and tax collectors and everyone who is invited to the table of the Lord.
Speaker 1: Now we know who we're listening to Jesus teach.
Speaker 1: And here it says and this made the Pharisees and the teachers of religious law complain.
Speaker 1: The Pharisees and the teachers of religious law complain the fact that people were coming and listening to Jesus.
Speaker 1: Tell a better story to Jesus show us where our eyes needed healing.
Speaker 1: This made them complain.
Speaker 1: So this part of the story starts out with a bunch of people who are very religious, who have a particular idea about God, who have a way of their morality, and these people are complaining and they are frustrated at the fact that Jesus doesn't seem to make any kind of division between people, because Jesus often ate with the Pharisees we know this because there's stories about them there but Jesus refused to allow any of the rules that people had set up to deny communion to say I will eat with the Pharisees and I will also eat with the notorious sinners.
Speaker 1: I will eat with everyone, and eating with someone, particularly in that day, was an invitation into friendship, an invitation into wholeness.
Speaker 1: And here we see the light of Christ.
Speaker 1: These people are here complaining, going.
Speaker 1: This should not be.
Speaker 1: These people cannot be included, and Jesus is just enjoying his dinner with all of them.
Speaker 2: You know, when you hear a story, most of the time we write ourselves in it at somewhere, someplace right, and rarely are any of us going to write ourselves in as the Pharisee and rarely are any of us going to write ourselves in as the Pharisee.
Speaker 2: But you know, if the truth be told, that's where most of the church is today, if I can be honest, and that might include you.
Speaker 2: So listen up, I'm listening for my own heart to be adjusted and checked, Because of course, we would think that we're not and want to be.
Speaker 2: But I ask you where your line is?
Speaker 2: Because the Pharisees had a line.
Speaker 2: They had a religious belief and a line and all they were is trying to honor God.
Speaker 2: I mean, we make them out to be these terrible people, but they were followers of God and they had their rules that they had.
Speaker 2: That sounds like me.
Speaker 2: And then they had lines and if you cross those lines, you went too far.
Speaker 2: We have lines that we say.
Speaker 2: I remember one time our church used to be twisted.
Speaker 2: Our pulpit was over there and the seats were out here.
Speaker 2: I just mean it was a different angle and it was like that.
Speaker 2: I remember the back row and this couple had come to church for a few years, off and on, and then I hadn't seen them in a while and all of a sudden the woman come in with a whole other man and come to find out that that was her new boyfriend.
Speaker 2: And turns out she wasn't divorced with the guys who used to bring and.
Speaker 2: And so all of a sudden the religious, uh people in my church told me I had an ultimatum that either they were leaving or that couple was to be publicly embarrassed and kicked out.
Speaker 2: And there's scripture where people do stuff like that.
Speaker 2: There are people that do stuff like that, but it's not Jesus.
Speaker 2: But see, they had a line and I've watched that line be different for other people.
Speaker 2: They're well open to these people, but if you behave this way or or have this kind of lifestyle or do you know, whatever it is, there's a line and you've crossed it.
Speaker 2: And I wonder if we miss.
Speaker 2: What Jesus is trying to do in our hearts is extend our ability to love, past what we see, because it's always easy to point out the sin that somebody else is doing that you're not, or it's always easy to point out the thing that they're doing that you aren't tempted with or you don't struggle with or whatever, and then we are on the side of good and they aren't, and, and so I I just think that really an answer to the kind of hatred we've seen this week and violence and and, uh, the the effort for somebody to silence someone because you disagree with the things that they say.
Speaker 2: You know, know, I just I can't get past the thought that, you know, if you had snuffed me out 20 years ago, I wouldn't have had a chance to become the person that God's trying real hard to make me be and for me to begin to open my heart to things that I was very closed off on before.
Speaker 2: And so I wonder if extending that line to people and welcoming people in to that conversation about Christ, welcoming people into that communication, that relationship, that love, could transform all of us.
Speaker 2: Maybe they need some transforming, but, as it turns out, as I reach down to pull someone up, I realized, oh, I needed transformation all along, and so I I wonder where we can, we can, stop ignoring that part in the bible that talks about the pharisee and begin to see where maybe that might just pertain to some of the choices I make and some of the the thought, thought patterns and belief systems that I hold on to that are not demonstrating Christ.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you reminded us that the Pharisees because often in the way that we tell the story are people that we look like and go.
Speaker 1: They're wrong.
Speaker 1: But the truth is these were people who devoted to God.
Speaker 1: They were people who were devoted to their history, to their culture, to the way that they experienced God.
Speaker 1: And so Jesus came and told us a whole new story and invites us to live completely different.
Speaker 1: But maybe we should start the service with the way that other groups do in such ways like this.
Speaker 1: Maybe we could all go good morning, my name is Heather and I'm a recovering Pharisee.
Speaker 1: Maybe we could all say that this is a recovery group for all of us, for all of the things that we nurture, all of the hatred and bigotry, all the things that we think are any kind of line to separate us.
Speaker 1: This is the illusion of sin, that we are separate.
Speaker 1: We are one.
Speaker 1: We are made in the image of God.
Speaker 1: We each have unique and beautiful gifts for the world, and so this invitation into the story is an invitation to see things differently.
Speaker 1: Jesus was asking the people who were there to see things differently, and the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complained that he was even associating with such sinful people, even eating them.
Speaker 1: And so the story of Jesus is a story of radical hospitality.
Speaker 1: The story of Jesus is a story of changing your mind, because God showed us who God really is.
Speaker 1: In fact, it is the apostle Paul who says this that Jesus showed us the perfect image of an invisible God.
Speaker 1: Once we didn't know what God was like, but now we do, because Jesus is with us.
Speaker 1: And this is the better story, beloved.
Speaker 1: Jesus shows us how to love each other, how to love the world.
Speaker 1: So Jesus hears these people, these beloved brothers, sisters, were not allowed.
Speaker 1: So I just want to tell you that If we're going to talk about who's complaining, it's the brothers.
Speaker 1: The brothers are there complaining and they're like the rules aren't being followed, and Jesus hears this.
Speaker 1: And Jesus tells them a story, a story.
Speaker 1: There's something incredible about the power of story, beloved.
Speaker 1: Jesus didn't wag his finger at them, jesus didn't shout at them, jesus didn't humiliate them.
Speaker 1: Jesus said I'd like to invite you to change your mind about something.
Speaker 1: In fact, that is what repentance actually is.
Speaker 1: It means to change the way that you think.
Speaker 1: And in this story, we are going to see how joy invites us to change the way that we think, and in this story we are going to see how joy invites us to change the way that we think.
Speaker 1: And so Jesus hears people complaining about his willingness to open arm.
Speaker 1: Every single person, the notorious sinners alike, the tax collectors alike, every marginalized group, welcomed Jesus sitting with them, and Jesus told this story.
Speaker 1: This is also told in Matthew in a different context.
Speaker 1: I remind you that stories aren't just told once, they're often told in different contexts, so you can see the wisdom in them.
Speaker 1: If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do?
Speaker 1: One of them gets lost, what will he do?
Speaker 1: Won't he leave the 99 others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it?
Speaker 1: And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders?
Speaker 1: He will leave the 99 and go after the one, and when he finds it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders.
Speaker 1: And when he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.
Speaker 1: This is a beautiful reminder this morning that no matter where you go, you have a good shepherd beloved, you have a God, you have love that is pursuing you, that is asking you to come into the party.
Speaker 1: Come into rejoicing, find joy and celebrate, because that which is lost is now found, that which is lost is now found.
Speaker 1: This is a beautiful invitation because it goes against logic.
Speaker 1: If you are a shepherd and you are keeping your sheep in the wilderness, the wilderness itself tells us a lot about something.
Speaker 1: There's danger there, there's harsh conditions there, and then he sees that one is missing and he leaves the 99.
Speaker 1: We're like well, we have to take losses somewhere, and this is a God who does not accept losses.
Speaker 1: This is a God who's going to go after the one Beloved.
Speaker 1: What great joy it should give us to remember that we have a good shepherd.
Speaker 1: Oh, when things feel out of control, when it feels like a wilderness experience for us, we have a good shepherd.
Speaker 1: And when he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors saying rejoice with me.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to get out a little bit further into the story, and perhaps you know this because it's a story we've all been told in our entire lives.
Speaker 1: But this is a story about a God who rejoices, a God who loves a party, a God who says there is good in the world and invites us into the party.
Speaker 1: Joy is healing for us, and when we practice joy, when we practice celebrating the things that are good, it is an invitation into this radical hospitality that everything is opened by Christ.
Speaker 1: In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than there is over 99 others who are righteous and haven't strayed away.
Speaker 1: In the same way, jesus is telling us this story is actually not about a shepherd, it's about God.
Speaker 1: It is about God who has joy, god who is joy, god who, by the Spirit, can birth in us joy.
Speaker 1: And in a world that tells us that we should only be afraid or be sad, we listen to the words of Jesus, who tells us we're invited to a kingdom that does not fail.
Speaker 1: We're invited to a kingdom wherever we are, in the changing of our mind.
Speaker 1: This is an invitation.
Speaker 1: Jesus is offering healing to us that we would change our minds.
Speaker 1: In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who changes the way that he thinks and returns to God.
Speaker 1: This language is the same.
Speaker 1: We don't get to read it this morning, but I'm going to give you a spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: There's a story of a father who has two sons and the one son leaves because he has an idea.
Speaker 1: We don't know what put that idea in his head, we don't know where it came from, but he had an idea that he was going to be better off by himself than in the father's house and he does his thing.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that some other time.
Speaker 1: But there's a portion of the story that says as he's eating pig slop, he changes his mind.
Speaker 1: Pig slop, he changes his mind and he returns to himself and he says I need to go home, I need to go back to my father.
Speaker 1: And this is the same kind of story that God is telling us.
Speaker 2: This rejoicing when one person changes their mind.
Speaker 2: This is the hope.
Speaker 2: You know, and I think by and large we have this idea that you know that it's your responsibility to come back, that God has left you alone and I sense that with people that are hearing this message, there's a portion of people that just carry a lot of loneliness and a lot of shame and guilt about mistakes that you've made, and sometimes that isolation is almost impossible to get out of.
Speaker 2: And I want to remind you that the God we serve says I go to that place.
Speaker 2: He is there with you.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 2: It's difficult to see in the middle of mire.
Speaker 2: My friend is a diver, a deep, deep sea diver.
Speaker 2: He's trained to do that, but some of the projects he'll get hired on will be dive down into mud and he said it's the scariest thing to not be able to see for hours.
Speaker 2: He said you have to almost calm yourself because you can't see your hand in front of your face and you feel the pressure of that and you just feel like maybe I'm stuck here for this is the end.
Speaker 2: You know, imagine that and maybe you don't experience anxiety and depression, but there are people right next to your shoulders that carry that on a daily basis and you feel alone, and Jesus is using this parable to try to remind you of this truth.
Speaker 2: You are not alone, you are not abandoned, you are not left until you get it right to come back, and that's really kind of been the message of the church, sadly.
Speaker 2: You know you come up here and walk this aisle and do things our way, and isn't that what this kind of stands in the face of the people that were doing it the right way were actually told no, that's not the way we're going to do it.
Speaker 2: He's breaking the barriers of religion and we keep putting them back on ourselves.
Speaker 2: The restraints are broken by him, the chains are loosed and we sit around sometimes and mend them.
Speaker 2: And so I remind you, wherever you are, you're not outside of the reach of God, you're not outside of the presence of God and you're not outside of the love and forgiveness and healing.
Speaker 2: And sometimes it's hard to even figure out.
Speaker 2: How do I apply that?
Speaker 2: How do I adapt that?
Speaker 2: How do I move in that, pastor?
Speaker 2: Well, that's why you have a church, because there are brothers and sisters and I can have them raise their hand right now who know what it's like to be in the depths of depression and somehow, through the grace of God, have been pulled out of that and they can share a path with you.
Speaker 2: And I can, and my wife can.
Speaker 2: And look at the people around here lifting their hands.
Speaker 2: You're not alone, we're a family.
Speaker 2: We're made to believe that we're alone.
Speaker 2: We're tricked in our own minds and our own thoughts to believe somehow we're so different and so in a unique situation.
Speaker 2: But nothing is outside of God's reach and his design and be able to transform.
Speaker 2: Amen.
Speaker 1: We pause here for a moment to thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 1: If you're finding this episode meaningful, would you take a moment to share it with a friend?
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Speaker 1: 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: This story is told in threes and we're only talking about two of them today, but I do want to talk about the fact that things get lost.
Speaker 1: We love to blame someone.
Speaker 1: We just do.
Speaker 1: I don't know who moved this.
Speaker 1: I don't know who put it somewhere else.
Speaker 1: I mean, we just we are good at blaming.
Speaker 1: No one wants responsibility for the losing of anything you know.
Speaker 1: Like that is like in our nature.
Speaker 1: Somehow we don't want to be the one who's lost.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about a sheep.
Speaker 1: How did the sheep get lost?
Speaker 1: A little lamb, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It has four legs.
Speaker 1: Maybe it wandered off.
Speaker 1: It saw something, I don't know, but it could have been that lamb's problem, and we often judge other people like that.
Speaker 1: I don't know how they got where they got.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they did, what choice they made?
Speaker 1: Beloved.
Speaker 1: Maybe they didn't make any choice at all, but we're going to get onto them.
Speaker 1: There's a woman who lost a coin.
Speaker 1: I just want to ask you about the agency of a coin.
Speaker 1: The coin doesn't lose itself, beloved.
Speaker 1: That's somebody else who is supposed to be looking after it, who lost it.
Speaker 1: You might be the lost coin.
Speaker 1: Maybe you find yourself in a place that feels alone, that feels terrible, but it has nothing to do with you.
Speaker 1: You may not be responsible for that, and this is still the story of God coming to you wherever you are.
Speaker 1: I love this story because there's so much reality in this particular version, because we're talking about a lost coin and Jesus says there's a woman who's gone to find it Now, beloved.
Speaker 1: What happens when we lose things?
Speaker 1: We call on the sisters, we call on the women Please help us find this, please.
Speaker 1: And this woman is willing to push past her skirts lay on the floorboard.
Speaker 1: Look, where could this coin have wedged itself?
Speaker 1: Where could this coin have gone?
Speaker 1: It says that she meticulously looks everywhere for this coin.
Speaker 1: She sweeps the entire house.
Speaker 1: Beloved.
Speaker 1: This is how you find things.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you knew this, but you clean up and put things away, and then you'll find something that's out of order, and this is a good word for you even though as people don't want to listen to it.
Speaker 1: We light a lamp, also important for those of us who are past the age of 40.
Speaker 1: If you can't find something, turn the light on.
Speaker 1: Turn the light on and we might be able to find it.
Speaker 1: And what is the light Beloved?
Speaker 1: We are the light of the world.
Speaker 1: Jesus said this.
Speaker 1: He said you are the light.
Speaker 1: If something needs to be found in a situation, you go there.
Speaker 1: Be the light.
Speaker 1: That is Christ.
Speaker 1: Allow the light to come and carefully searches until she finds it.
Speaker 1: And when she finds it, she will call in her families and neighbors and say rejoice with me because I found my lost coin Again.
Speaker 1: The invitation is to joy.
Speaker 1: The invitation is to community, the invitation is to belonging.
Speaker 1: Every time something is returned, we have a party Beloved.
Speaker 1: There is joy in God.
Speaker 1: God is a God who is not angry and sour-faced and upset that people aren't doing things.
Speaker 1: God is full of love.
Speaker 1: God is love and the invitation is that we would begin to see things, allow our eyes to be healed.
Speaker 1: We would see them the way that God does.
Speaker 1: Beloved I have found recently and I am working on this and you may find it and you may work on it.
Speaker 1: Also, there are only two categories for everything, which helps me because I'm a person who has had a lot of.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of children and like things.
Speaker 1: If you're doing laundry, there's a lot of sorting.
Speaker 1: Who goes where?
Speaker 1: What does this?
Speaker 1: Do you know?
Speaker 1: How does this get?
Speaker 1: If you've got silverware and you've got a 12-piece silverware?
Speaker 1: Where?
Speaker 1: If you've got silverware and you've got a 12-piece silverware, where does each thing go?
Speaker 1: A lot of times we sort in our minds.
Speaker 1: So there's only two categories for everything it's all love or it's a call to be loved.
Speaker 1: One of the two and so if it's love, then I just join right into it.
Speaker 1: If it's a call to be love, then I find the Christ in me.
Speaker 1: And how do I bring love to that situation?
Speaker 1: It's all love or a call to love.
Speaker 1: This is the invitation for us.
Speaker 1: Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.
Speaker 2: You know, and I think that if you can look at this scripture it also can help us maybe reorient our default mode, because you know you probably have a default mode of just how you exist, how you function through life.
Speaker 2: And are you a pessimist, are you depressed, are you angry most of the time, or are you rejoicing, are you finding within, you know, just nature itself?
Speaker 2: The other said something the other day in the pulpit, just like how can we not just be thankful for the trees because we breathe, because of what they hand out, what they they, you know, uh, expel?
Speaker 2: And it's like, are you thankful for, for oxygen?
Speaker 2: Whenever it gets knocked out of you, you want it real bad, and so we forget how much we need it because it's coming so plentifully.
Speaker 2: But, uh, but I, I, I bring you back to that idea of where is your default mode and and ask God to help you shift that to a place of joy.
Speaker 2: You know I got to tell you there's two ways of looking at what my day yesterday was.
Speaker 2: I was in the shop and it was hot.
Speaker 2: I was lifting and moving heavy things and later on that evening I was very sore.
Speaker 2: Or the truth.
Speaker 2: I have a mid-30s son, who could very well hate me and want nothing to do with me, invited me in to a project that he was doing and I had the most joy just spending time with my son and I counted every minute.
Speaker 2: He's working, he's gone for all practical purposes and I got to spend that time with him and I got to tell you that I just you couldn't knock the joy out of me.
Speaker 2: I'd stand up and he'd go what's wrong?
Speaker 2: Oh, nothing.
Speaker 2: But I'm like you know what was wrong?
Speaker 2: I was just so sore.
Speaker 2: But it's like what's my default mode?
Speaker 2: Oh man, how you doing.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sore, how you doing?
Speaker 2: Well, you know taxes are coming around.
Speaker 2: You know they're always coming around.
Speaker 2: Or, man, am I grateful that I have my spouse, that I have children, that I have my spouse, that I have children, that I have a job, that I have an income, that I have oxygen?
Speaker 2: There's something you can find, and I'm telling you, in shifting that default mode, it shifts your universe, it shifts some things around in us.
Speaker 2: And so look at that and go.
Speaker 2: Why are God's people, those weirdos, rejoicing all the time?
Speaker 2: What's wrong with them?
Speaker 2: Or I can go.
Speaker 1: I want some of that rejoicing Amen, there's joy in the presence of God's angels.
Speaker 1: When even one person who's in an illusion changes their mind, that's what the scripture says.
Speaker 1: To repent is to change the way you're looking at something.
Speaker 1: When even one person who's in an illusion changes their mind, that's what the scripture says.
Speaker 1: To repent is to change the way you're looking at something, and the only reason why we would head down a wrong path is because, if we've been told it is the right path, it is an illusion, and that's why so much of Jesus' miracles have to do with healing our sight, healing the way that we look at the world, the way that we look at each other.
Speaker 1: This is an invitation.
Speaker 1: I did not have to participate in the outside work yesterday, and for this I am grateful, but what I did recognize, and what was so beautiful to me, is all of the work that Thomas and Dennis and the other people that contributed are doing, is not for any of us.
Speaker 1: Thomas saw somebody else in need and recognized the resource.
Speaker 1: At our house we have people who could fix this, and so this is what true community looks like.
Speaker 1: We now have friends that we are meeting in need, not because we know them, but because Thomas loves them.
Speaker 1: And this is the invitation of the church that, as we allow everyone to come together, as we don't make delineations between notorious sinners, tax collectors and Pharisees, as we just say we are all the children of God and everyone is invited to communion, to fellowship, to wholeness.
Speaker 1: This is how our love expands, beloved, this is how the world changes, that we allow ourselves to love people that we don't even know, maybe we disagree with, maybe we don't have any point or any way to connect, but somebody we love loves them, and that's a way for us to love them.
Speaker 1: And this is where joy is, in this beautiful, hopeful place.
Speaker 1: This is where communion takes place, that all of us remember.
Speaker 1: It is at the table where we are reminded of the goodness of God.
Speaker 1: It is in hope and in holy communion that we're reminded.
Speaker 1: This is, in fact, the season of creation, from September to October, where we pay attention to nature.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to pay attention to it all the time, but the church, fathers and mothers realize we're going to need to make this a holiday.
Speaker 1: We're going to need to make this something that you put together here, where we remember what the animals teach us.
Speaker 1: Have you ever really had a heartache and had a dog look at you.
Speaker 1: There's something holy about that.
Speaker 1: Have you ever really been afraid and have an animal speak to you of it's peace?
Speaker 1: There's peace.
Speaker 1: We are not alone.
Speaker 1: There is something so incredibly powerful about the witness of nature that comes to us and reminds us that there is joy in belonging and all of nature is given.
Speaker 1: Every time we're at the table, we use bread and we use the juice, and we're reminded that nature is witnessing to us the mystery that is inclusion.
Speaker 2: I think you've got a perfect opportunity right here to talk about the fact.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm going to say and I'm doing this as a selfless is it?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: What is this like a selfless opportunity?
Speaker 2: I offer to the people in this room or who are watching me online that it's scientifically proven.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's not me.
Speaker 2: I didn't come up with this.
Speaker 2: Heather read it the other day that there's a healing vibration in your body and a cat's purr is that same frequency.
Speaker 2: I have two kittens at my house that I offer that they were rescued unto thee because I want nature to witness to you.
Speaker 2: I want healing vibrations to come through your body.
Speaker 2: I want you to cuddle.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that because I want them out of my bathroom.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that because the litter box stinks.
Speaker 2: I'm saying that because I love you.
Speaker 2: It's a boy and a girl.
Speaker 2: I mean pair matching pair.
Speaker 2: It's for your taking.
Speaker 2: I don't know, heather, I'm going to try next week.
Speaker 2: I've successfully derailed the service.
Speaker 2: Now Go on.
Speaker 1: Let me try to bring it back around for this reason.
Speaker 1: Why do you have two cats?
Speaker 1: If you didn't want them, why are you trying to give away something that you have?
Speaker 1: Let me just tell you how we got them.
Speaker 1: It was raining and it was midnight, and these two tiny kittens can fit in the palm of your hand.
Speaker 1: We're outside alone.
Speaker 2: In the street.
Speaker 1: In the street, beloved.
Speaker 1: I don't, however, you planned your day.
Speaker 1: When you see something that is tiny and needs defense, when you see something big and needs defense, it is in us all a call to love in ways that are inconvenient to us, and this is how we practice our attention on the small things, on the things that seem like they don't matter rescuing a kitten and you know that small things are going to be a lot of work.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever had a child before, if you've ever been around children before.
Speaker 1: They are tiny and they are a lot of work, but they're not the only things that are a lot of work.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people stuck in their own way of doing things with hateful things in their heart are a lot of work, and so we can either disregard that or we can, together, say we will tell a better story.
Speaker 1: We'll tell the story of Jesus, who tells us about a man who lost a sheep and left 99 and went out after it.
Speaker 1: We'll tell the story of a woman who lost a coin and found it and said everybody, come home and rejoice.
Speaker 1: You know the story.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about it today.
Speaker 1: This is a three-part story.
Speaker 1: There is a father who has a son who leaves and comes home and he has a party and he says my son, who is dead, is now alive.
Speaker 1: Of course we have to celebrate.
Speaker 1: And the older brother is in the corner going I can't believe you're having a party for him.
Speaker 1: I've been here the whole time.
Speaker 1: I've done the right thing every single day.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that's what you're celebrating.
Speaker 1: And you know what the father says Just come into the party, beloved.
Speaker 1: We don't ever know if he goes into the party, because I think that's our choice.
Speaker 1: Beloved, we don't ever know.
Speaker 1: If he goes into the party because I think that's our choice, will you enter joy?
Speaker 1: Will you intentionally say where can I be a part of the hope that builds the world?
Speaker 1: Where do I enter into the story that Jesus is retelling for all of us, that there is another kingdom, and it is not the kingdom of this world, it is the kingdom of God's love, and it is available now.
Speaker 1: It is available right now.
Speaker 1: Somebody was telling me something the other day about eternity and they kept referring to it as way, way down the round, and I was reminding them.
Speaker 1: Eternity is now beloved.
Speaker 1: We are not outside of eternity.
Speaker 1: Eternity is now, and so the choices that we make now certainly influence the further part of eternity, but this is all eternity.
Speaker 1: We're not outside of eternity.
Speaker 1: We are one in Christ, we are one in each other, we are one in the Spirit.
Speaker 1: And this is the invitation to live in this community, to live in communion with God at the table and to make sure all of our brothers and sisters are welcomed at the table of the Lord and that at the table it is not sorrow, there is joy.
Speaker 2: And did I mention they were litter box trained?
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding In the same way there is joy in the presence of.
Speaker 1: God's angels when even one person changes their mind about something.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this week's sermon.
Speaker 1: If you would like more information about us, visit us online at firstlovechurchorg.