If I would ask you, who are those in our culture you would name as blessed?

Think about that. Who does our culture say is blessed? I think about people who have extravagant materialist things such as houses or cars. People who have a good stock portfolio. People with large incomes. People who have achieved their dreams. Those are the people that our culture lifts up as blessed.

But who do we as the church name as blessed? Well, the word Makarios in Greek means blessed or to receive God’s favor. So, who is it that God prefers in the world? Well, God prefers the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger in our midst. Those are the people God tells us over and over and over to care for. That’s who God prefers. God is looking for us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, and welcome the stranger.

So, let’s remind ourselves again about who Matthew’s audience is.

Because remember, we’re not in Mark, we’re in Matthew. Matthew is writing to this specific group of people who are Jewish and believe in Jesus. Scholars believe that they lived in Antioch of Syria in about 90 AD, which means they know that the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

They are still under Roman occupation and will be for another almost 400 years. There’s not much sign of that changing. They are living in a time where they are doing too bad. It’s believed that they’re not the destitute, but they know the destitute. They see it. They know of the people who are in need. And they, in trying to find God, are also trying to figure out how they still live obeying the Jewish laws and following what they know of Jesus.

Matthew Chapter 5 is written to help them know more about Jesus and what Jesus calls for. They try to stay in their synagogues and they get forced out. They don’t have a place to be. They are literally forming the first churches. They’re trying to come together and form churches and they still carry that Hebrew Bible belief in blessings and curses. That idea from Deuteronomy choose life or death. God wants us to choose life, but if we choose badly there are curses that come with. Like last week with the sheep and the goats, you either choose well, or you don’t choose well.

This was still the time that Jesus lived in, and it’s the time that Matthew’s audience lives in, even though it is 60 years later. They are under an authoritative regime that is taxing them so that the wealthy can maintain power and have their extravagances and others are losing everything. Because, once you don’t have the ability to pay your taxes, then they start taking your land, your cattle, your animals, and your property. If you speak out against the empire then you’re arrested, and the penalty for speaking against the empire is crucifixion. Don’t miss that, because that’s important in Jesus’ story. That’s why Jesus is crucified, because he was a threat to the empire.

Yet, Jesus starts his first teaching in Matthew with this long sermon, and it goes on into chapter seven.

I don’t know how many of you watch the series on Amazon Prime called “The Chosen’, but “The Chosen” has a great scene about this. Their interpretation is that they have the character of Jesus say, “I’m giving them a map to know where to find me.” Matthew 5:1-11 is a map. Think about that.

Jesus is saying he is going to be with the poor, with the grieving, with the humble, with those who seek justice, with those who show mercy, with those who are listening for God, with those who make peace, and those who are harassed for being themselves, that’s where Jesus is.

Then, that last line, Matthew 5:11, if you follow me, if you look for righteousness, if you hunger for righteousness, then you also will suffer. But your reward will be great in heaven.

My friends, I think that we need to be honest about where we are in this time and place.

We are living in a time when there is authoritarianism that is trying to rule our lives. They are trying to gain power from the very bottom in Hempfield School District, who doesn’t have a contract for teachers. All the way up. They want to take away freedom.

We are exhausted and afraid. We just need to admit that. Life right now is hard. Admitting your problem is the first step in healing so we need to name that we are exhausted and afraid. The antidote for being exhausted and afraid is awe and wonder, so we have to shift our focus from the stuff we hear on tv to god. Remember that, Jesus First.

We need to shift our focus and realize that we too are loved no matter what you are dealing with in your life, you are loved and you are worthy. You are accepted and you are welcome here. This is a safe space for you. We claim that in our vision that we want to be that safe space for people to be themselves. We want to offer comfort and strength, not because we have answers, but because we are on a journey ourselves for our own answers. We will walk eachother home.

Now, I want to invite you into a few moments of peace. I have the most awesome pictures from the James Webb telescope.

I’m going to begin with the words of God to Job. “Then God said to Job, ‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you know. Who set its measurements? Surely you know. Who stretched a measuring tape on it? On what were its footings sunk? Who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang in unison and all the divine beings shouted? Can you bind the chains of the Pallades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the Maserath in their season or guide the bear with its children? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds so that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings? So that they may go and say to you, here we are. Who has put wisdom in the inward parts or given understanding to the mind? Who can tilt the water skins of the heavens when the dust runs into a mass and the clouds cling together?'” – Job 38:4-7

“Then Job answered the Lord, ‘I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand. Things too wonderful for me, That I did not know here and I will speak. I will question you and you declare to me I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye see you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” – Job 42:1-6

From Psalm 104 “Bless the Lord. Oh, my soul. Oh, Lord. My God. You are very great. You are clothed with honor and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch out the heavens like a tent. You set the beams of your chambers on the waters. You make the clouds your chariot. You ride on the wings of the wind. You make the winds your messengers. Fire and flame your ministers.”

I invite you this week to take some time in nature.

Take a few moments and watch the leaves fall. Appreciate the colors. Put yourself in a place that feeds your spirit.

I’m attracted to running water. So, Brubaker Run makes a beautiful sound. Or if you can walk down the path at Doorworth Park, walk down to the Little Conestoga. Just listen to it or appreciate all that you see, all that our natural world, all the ways that our God is showing us that we’re going into a cycle of death.

That is true, but joy will come in the morning and there will be a resurrection in the spring.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

Let me begin by saying that this was one of the hardest sermons I have given in a very long time because it does not support my theology.

When I think about God and who God is, I believe in a God of compassion and grace. While there is compassion in our verse today (Matthew 25:31-46), there is no grace—none. And so it challenges us to consider that possibility.

But I want to start with compassion. When I look at the life of Jesus, I see one who was compassionate. Compassion is used four times to describe Jesus, how Jesus felt, and it’s when he’s looking at a crowd of people and he has great compassion for their needs. The word in Greek actually means a lot of feelings inside stirred internally because that’s where they thought that feelings resided, they were internal things. Our definition of compassion is a feeling of sorrow or deep tenderness for one who is suffering or experiencing misfortune. It comes from the Latin calm being with or together pate to suffer. So it’s a suffering with.

When I look at Jesus life, that’s what I saw. I saw one who went with the people, who suffered with the people.

He wasn’t looking for privilege. He wasn’t looking to be in a place that had luxuries or he wasn’t even looking for power. When people started to come in mass, he left. He traveled with the people and went to the people that were hurting, he sat and ate with them. That’s how I see Jesus. That’s the part of God that I think Jesus was showing us.

So what do I do with Matthew 25:31-46? Well, I’ve got to look at the Gospel of Matthew first.

I wanted to talk about compassion, so where’s the compassion in this text? I think that’s the part that makes us love this text We love to hear, you should feed the hungry and you should give drink to those who are thirsty. You should welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and imprisoned. We want to do that. Yes, that’s our rallying cry.

I associate this with the Outreach Commission. That’s what we want to be.

But the larger context of this is that it’s an apocalyptic scene about the end time and how things are going to end. So let’s look at Matthew’s gospel. To look at Matthew’s total gospel, we have to pay attention to who is the intended audience. Matthew is writing to people who are Jewish but believe in Jesus. They’re trying to figure out how they live that out. There aren’t Christian churches at this time for them to just go over to the Christian church. That didn’t exist. They had been in synagogues. And they were probably either asked to leave or told to leave. They were no longer welcome because they believed, because this is Matthew’s gospel, that Jesus was the Messiah.

So the Messiah had come. Think of the very beginning of Matthew’s gospel. The Messiah in the Jewish faith needs to come, be a human being, and come from the lineage of David. Do you remember how Matthew starts his gospel with that gray lineage and how he is connected to David? He goes back to Adam and Eve. But, he’s connected to, so he’s of the lineage of David. He’s mortal and divine. But he is a human being. In that first scene with Joseph, the angel tells Joseph, this is Emmanuel God with us, this is the one, this is the Messiah.

The whole gospel of Matthew is about Jesus as the Messiah. So Jesus knows the Jewish scriptures well. These people know the Jewish scriptures. They know the traditions and they’re trying to figure out how we continue to observe our Jewish traditions when we’re not allowed in the synagogue.

One of the things that comes with the Messiah is the end times.

When the Messiah comes, so there will be a third temple built in Jerusalem. This is hard because Matthew reads as if the second temple is still there. But it was written after the second temple was destroyed. So, there’s going to be a new temple in Jerusalem. And all the Jews from all over the world are going to be called together. And all people are going to be judged. And those who are evil and sinful will be sent, and Matthew loves the phrase, “to wailing and gnashing of teeth” or you’re going to be with God and you’re in eternity with God. You’re in heaven and everything’s wonderful.

This comes from a church and in the center, it shows Christ the king. So first of all, and our worship commission talked about this. What’s the difference between the son of man and the king?

On Jesus’ right, all are happy and everything’s good. They’ve got crosses and halos around their heads and life is good. Then on his left, which is where the goats go, there’s this beast that’s going to eat them and they look like they’re just in misery. So that’s the wailing and the gnashing of teeth for Matthew.

Matthew puts this as Jesus’s last teaching before his passion. Before Jesus leaves the teaching, he’s got to talk about the end. And because Matthew is probably Jewish and, and he’s talking to a Jewish audience, he lives out this messianic vision of what is going to happen. He’s not going to give up on that.

So, we have three parables that start at the end of the 24th chapter.

The first one is about the bridesmaids. Do you remember the parable of the ten bridesmaids? Where five remember to get oil and five do not. And the five who remember their oil when the bridegroom shows up. They’ve got oil and they go off into eternity. They go off to the wedding feast with the bridegroom. But for the five who do not, the doors are shut and you are not welcome.

Then it’s the parable of the slave owner, the master, and the slaves with talents. A talent is a weight that is worth money. They are given, we talk about talents as gifts, but they are money. It is about money. And the slaves are given different amounts of money. The ones who took the money and did things with the money are congratulated and the one slave who’s afraid takes the talent. He only gets one. He gets his talent and he buries it in the ground and he gets punished because he has done nothing with the money he was given. He hoarded it and did nothing with it.

Again, this idea of the good receives a reward. Those who do wrong receive a punishment. And now, we have this scene where all the people come and Jesus divides them. Christ the King divides them into the sheep and the goats. The sheep are rewarded and the goats receive eternal punishment.

The compassion in this story, because I like compassion and I’m using compassion more than love because I think love has so much we don’t understand what it means to love another person.

But what do we need? We need to be looking out because if we don’t, if we don’t look out, we never see the need of the other. I think we need to take the justice element seriously.

So anytime we have a parable, there is always a surprise. And you might think that the surprise is the fact that the goats are punished. But I’m going to argue that’s not where the surprise is.

And I had a list of them. I mean, I started with children at the border. I went to the border patrol website, the official government border patrol website, cause I don’t trust anybody else’s numbers. I wanted to know how many children came to the border because, to me, those are who we need to be concerned about.

But I also started thinking about the LGBTQ community. Especially how transgender and non-binary people are being picked on. Particularly transgender. And how about women and reproductive health? I could have gone there.

But the reality is, it’s not for me to pick. The surprise in this parable is that neither the ones who did it right or the ones who did it wrong knew that they were right or wrong. That my friends should give us a reason to pause on all of the things that we think we know and all of the people that we are being told need to be controlled.

We need to remember that Christ calls us to compassion. So if there is someone who is suffering, we need to suffer with them. I do think we still look for those who are being picked on, for those who are being denied rights, for those rights that are being taken away, or we’re being told they need to be taken away. We need to be careful.

God is the one who will judge.

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

Save the date! On Sunday, November 17^th, we will hold our annual congregational meeting at 11 AM, immediately following worship. During this important gathering, we’ll review and vote on the updated bylaws and the 2025 budget, and introduce new marketing and branding procedures that align with our refreshed logo. You can view the bylaws and budget by clicking on the link below, additionally these materials have also been mailed to all active members. Your presence is vital to ensure these decisions represent our shared vision. We look forward to seeing you there!

View the 2025 Budget (Simple Version or Line Item Version)

View the Narrative Budget Pie Chart Here

View the Updated Bylaws Here

View the Governance Organizational Flow Chart Here

View the State of Church of the Apostles Slideshow Here

All are welcome to a festive gathering where children will hear the Christmas story from Rev. Kuhn, sing classic carols, and enjoy cookies and hot cocoa. Plus, don’t miss the chance for free photos with Santa!  Registration is encouraged to help us plan for this special event.

Click Here to Register!

We hope to see you there! 

Whenever we hear the words from first chapter of Genesis, we think about the master plan of God’s creativity out of chaos, out of an ugly world of nothing.

God created our world. Genesis paints a marvelous picture of how God did this. In the first chapter of Genesis, we listen to the likes of, “n the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God created light and sky and water and dry ground and God filled it up by creating habitats for animals and plants.

Then, finally, God created human beings and when God was all finished, what did God say? It is good.

You’re all familiar with this story. God made humankind to be like God. Created to reflect the very nature of God. Did you ever stop and wonder why? Why did God bother? Was God bored? Was God lonely? What was God’s motive in all of this creating? Well, to find an answer to this question, we go searching the scriptures to find out a little more about God.

I read to you today from Psalm 19. Listen to what the psalmist tells us about God.

“The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech. Night after night, they reveal knowledge. Yet they have no speech and they have no words. No sound is heard from them yet. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world.” Psalm 19.

I believe God is revealing God’s self through the action of creation. God’s omnipresence, God’s all encompassing presence is revealed in God’s artistic act of creation. God’s spirit surrounds us in the air and the sea and the mountains, even though you hear no words.

The sounds that you do hear are the very presence of God.

Have you ever perched yourself on the edge of a cliff and the wind blew through your hair onto your face? Or have you ever sat on the sands of the beach and listened to the rhythm of the waves crashing onto the surface? Or have you ever lingered in your garden watching the movement of the bees and the butterflies and the birds? What did you feel in these moments when you were surrounded by God’s creation? Did you feel peace, tranquility, comfort?

I would like to suggest what you were feeling is love. The Bible clearly tells us God is love. We see it from the very beginning. It’s always been about love. In all of creation, God created love.

Why? Because as scripture tells us in 1 John, God is love. Love. It’s just who God is. I’m here to tell you, love is how we were created to be. We are children of God and that makes us children of love.

The scripture test for today says God created human beings. He created them to be godlike. He created them to reflect God’s image. You my friends were designed by love you were designed by love in God’s image thus you were made to be loving.

Genesis is pretty clear That God created us for a very specific purpose, we’re to be like God. We are to be a reflection of God’s image. In other words, we are to look like God.

And how do we live up to God’s expectation of us being God’s image bearers? What does a loving God, a loving image person look like? What are we to look like?

First of all. According to Eugene Peterson, God made us to be responsible for tending God’s created world. We are to love our planet, and we do that by tending to the fish in the sea and the birds in the air. We are to be intentional in preserving life. We are to ensure all God’s critters and grasses are preserved. This is a declarative act. Call to action by God. The words we heard today say we are responsible for the planet.

Other biblical versions use harsher language that say humankind is to rule over all of creation. Some say humankind has been given dominion over the critters and the trees, but a loving interpretation, the one Peterson uses says we are to be stewards of the planet. We are to care for it.

The creation story clearly tells us that we have been given a responsibility to nurture creation.

But secondly, and in my opinion, even more importantly, the creation story tells us we are to love creation. Again, taking on an image of God means we are to be loving.

What does that look like? We know that love is a word that has multiple meanings. What images come to your mind when you hear the word love? We can love ice cream. I know I do. We love our siblings and our children. But that’s a different kind of love than what we have for our spouses.

Love is beautiful. Love it evokes the best in us and also the fiercest in us. I believe what the scripture is telling us to do is to love like God loves.

If we are to be like God than we must imitate God, but here’s the thing God doesn’t love like we love. We humans love in what is more a reactive manner. When we love, it’s because we find the object of our love pleasing to us. I love a Dairy Queen Blizzard with all its candy and ice cream blended into a tasty treat. I love them. Because they tantalize my taste buds. We humans love by our senses. When we see or smell, taste or touch something that is pleasing, we love it. You may have fell in love with your spouse because of his or her beauty, or because he or she was a good cook. This is the way humans love. Human love is reactive. We respond to our environments, but God’s love is different.

God’s love is not a reaction to the senses, rather God’s love is transformative. God’s love is creative. You see, here’s the thing about love. It’s not static. Love is an action word. God was busy during the creation week. God started off with nothing. Just chaos and God got busy creating land and sea and critters and plants. Then, the most marvelous act of his love was when God created us.

God created humankind. God was so busy that week that God got tired, didn’t he? So, what did he do? He rested. He set aside a day of all of this busy work so that we can rest, revive, refresh, and reflect. God needed a day of rest because creating is hard work.

Loving can be exhausting. You know that’s true. It’s not always easy to love. It’s especially hard to love like God loves. It’s not easy to create goodness from the ugly, but that is what God did. And that is what God commands us to do. Therefore, we are also called to do just as God loves.

God’s creation story is a call to action. We are called to transform lives.

We are not just to slumber and bask in the comfortable, peaceful, sunny meadows of life where we love to hang out watching those wildflowers sway in the breeze, birds flying in the air and the wind moving the clouds around in those remarkable shapes. We are to be busy. We are to always be on the move.

We are to be instruments for God’s creative and transforming love. See, here’s the thing, you know, God never stops creating. God created the world and God continues to create the world as an act of love. I know this and you know this because you and I can see it in the face of a newborn baby, in the blossom of a flower, in the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly, at the dawning of each new day, and we are offered the opportunity to be awakened and changed because God loves us.

When we invite God’s love, we too can create something lovely out of the chaos of this world, when we too become agents for change. Daily, my friends, we walk through the muck and mire of the “isms” of this world. Racism, sexism, ageism, and all forms of hate. We must be agents of change and create love.

When we tend to the social soils with loving hearts, chaos that accompanies violence, hatred, anger, while it’s transformed because love transformed. Those things are transformed to the likeness of kindness and justice and mercy. Love in action creates a world of beauty that blossoms into abundance.

Change begins with each one of us.

You may feel small and insignificant, but remember, God created you with love to be love. It’s in your DNA. Do not get comfortable. Today is the day to love God’s people and by loving, I mean nurture, inspire, revive what God has already initiated. Go forth from this world and be an agent of love and make change happen.

You can do that right where you are. Even you, my friends, can make a difference.

Now that is love is an amazing love. Amen.

This Sermon given by Rev. Katherine Seiler

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

Our Crafter’s Marketplace is back and better than ever!

With 20 amazing vendors, this event is your one-stop shop for stunning handmade treasures: ceramics, quilts, table runners, wreaths, paper crafts, and more! Perfect for holiday gifts or simply supporting local artisans, you’re bound to find something special.

Plus, check out our own Church of the Apostles Craft Group’s beautiful creations and swing by the food court and bake sale for homemade goodies by our Apostles Adult Choir!

Saturday, November 9th | 9 AM – 3 PM

Church of the Apostles Come early to beat the crowds! This is a day you won’t want to miss!

This week, I received an email from the Lancaster County Food Hub, which seemed like it fit in with our story.

The email included an account by a person named Ashley. That’s not her actual name, but that’s the name they gave her in the email.

Ashley is a 38 year-old woman who seemed to have it all. A successful career, a stylish wardrobe, and a luxury car. She appeared confident and thriving. But after losing her job through a company layoff, her world unraveled. Ashley’s unemployment benefits barely covered the cost of her rent. Finally, she faced the harsh reality of her dwindling resources.

Each day, she worried about how she was going to make it. and had growing anxiety about her future. Ashamed and overwhelmed, Ashley found herself trapped in silence, too embarrassed to ask for help. She felt like a failure for needing assistance, a far cry from the confident woman she used to be.

So, in a moment of desperation, Ashley walked into the Food Hub. The atmosphere was warm and welcoming, but she felt out of place and vulnerable in her time of need. She said, “I never would have thought that I needed help like this. Thank you for helping me.” This is what she told one of the client volunteers, her voice breaking with a mix of relief and sorrow.

As I focused on our scripture for today (Luke 10:25-37), what I realized is that many of us could be that one in need of help.

I was just part of a survey taken in our area around housing and the amount of people who are afraid that they are going to lose their housing. Losing housing right now is a terrible thing because there aren’t many available.

So you might think of Ashley and you might think, well, she could just give up that car. But, that’s her only means of transportation. She may not live on a bus line which will really limit her options. Giving up her apartment might be a wise financial choice. But can she find something that’s cheaper? That’s difficult in our community right now and I want to own that because many of us are proud people and we don’t like to let others know when we have problems, when we have issues that we need to talk through.

“Lean on Me” by Bill Withers was a perfect song for this week, because we don’t tend to share our problems. We try to keep them covered. I’m not suggesting that you stand up and broadcast to the entire congregation, but you might just find another person who’s willing to listen.

I want to specifically lift up right now our Compassion Team, because our Compassion Team has agreed to just listen to who you are and what you are going through. They’re not there to have answers or to fix anything, but they are there to listen. We do have some resources that we can direct you to as well. So, think about that. Think about if that’s something that would be helpful to you.

The thing about the person on the side of the road in the scripture that we read, it’s interesting that Luke makes the point of telling us that they were naked.

When you have a detail like that, you have to stop and say, what is the point? What is he trying to say by telling us that he is naked? They’re telling us that that person had no identity. Their identity was gone. So they are a nobody or they could be anybody. I think when we hear this scripture, we prefer to see ourselves as either the scholar asking the questions of Jesus or the Samaritan, because we would be the one who would do the right thing.

That’s what we want to believe. But Jesus’ initial audience would not have chosen to be the Samaritan. The Samaritan was the despised. They were seen as morally wrong, abhorrent, out of favor with God. Nobody wanted to be a Samaritan. Nobody wanted to associate with a Samaritan. How did they get to be the one who did it?

Jesus is making a strong point that we tend to judge people by what we see on the outside. Just like we may have judged Ashley based on how Ashley presents. We have to be very careful when people come to the church asking for help because it’s easy to look out and see what kind of car they drive and what kind of clothes they wear and we can be completely misreading them. It’s about listening to who they are, hearing their story. That’s how we connect.

It’s not about judging people, although I find it very interesting because the story almost sets us up to judge the priest and the Levite. When we read that they crossed over and walked on the other side of the road, we want to say, how could they? We wouldn’t do such a thing. We wouldn’t turn our back on someone in need. But we have to stop and wonder, why did they do that? The story does not tell us. The traditional answer has been they would have gotten blood on them and then they would have been unclean and they would have had to go through the whole process of cleansing themselves in order for them to do their jobs.

What if the reason was that that scene was too common?

One more body on the side of the road. This isn’t today, there weren’t ambulances running up and down. What if that scene was just too common? Like a person standing on a corner asking for money. How often do we look the other way?

In true Jesus fashion in this parable, he really doesn’t answer the question, does he? Who is my neighbor?

The scholar wants a clear answer. Just tell me who I’m supposed to like. You tell me who I’m supposed to like and I’ll follow that. But please make somebody that looks like me, talks like me, thinks like me. Has the same lifestyle I do. Don’t push me out of my comfort zone. Don’t make it a person from a different country, a different culture, a different gender, a different orientation. Don’t push me out of my comfort zone, God.

Can we open ourselves up to be pushed a little by God to stretch our thinking a little?

This week I received a text from a person who’s watching online, they are unchurched would be the word for them. They do not have any church affiliation and the person texted me and said in your sermon last week, you said that if we judge people, we cannot love them. I said, I don’t know if I used those words, but that was the message I was trying to get across because our judgments get in the way of our ability to love.

They said, I’m looking for a place that I can worship where my son can come with me and I’m afraid of people judging us and she sent me a picture. I had not seen her son in many, many years, but he has tattoo sleeves and he has piercings and he has gauges in his ears. She wanted to know if he would be welcome here.

I told her, I think that there is a large group here that would accept him. But I don’t know if everybody’s on that. But I would hope that if someone comes in here that is not just like us, that we would offer them grace and mercy, be kind and respectful. It’s our job to be listeners.

I want to give us an example of how people and how judgments affect how we act.

I don’t know about you, but when I was a child if I was given a glass of milk and if I had spilled that milk, I would have been labeled a milk spiller. I never would have been given a full glass of milk again because I’m a milk spiller. If you’re a milk spiller, then we’re not going to give you all that milk to just go spill it that we have to clean up. That label of a milk spiller stays with you.

I’m going to say that it stays with you, so when I pour milk for my children and now my grandchildren, nobody’s getting a full glass of milk because they might end up being milk spillers too and I don’t want to create milk spillers. So nobody gets a full glass of milk.

But, what’s the value of some spilled milk? A couple cents? Not even a buck. The whole half gallon costs $2.35.

Let’s not be those who judge people and who label people, but who accept people as they are and look for those opportunities.

It probably won’t be someone laying on the side of the road naked and bloody, but it could be someone that you’re standing in line with. It could be your next door neighbor who just needs someone to listen to what’s going on in their lives because our lives fall apart.

Life is full of joy and sorrow. So we can come together and support one another. We can lean on each other. Because that’s what builds the beloved community.

That’s who we are called to be. We are called to be the beloved community to one another and to every person that walks in the door. May it be so

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast