Friends: Pam’s daughter Lauren married Greg Saturday, blending families and going forward in life.  I officiated the service and wanted to share the homily I wrote on love. Blessings, Bob

Spirituality Column #936

October 22, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Complete Love

By Bob Walters

“Love … always perseveres.” – The Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:7

Lauren and Greg, with her three small children and his one, were married and became a blended family last Saturday.  It was a career first for me, officiating the small, cozy ceremony among their dearest family and closest friends. I thought I’d share the homily:

Not one of us, individually, is “complete.” I believe our singular human incompleteness was and has been part of God’s plan since the Garden of Eden. We need a sure savior. We need trusted friends. We need nurturing family. We need a loving mate. It is a blessing to have loving children.  Hope resides in all these things.

The Bible says, “God is love,” but our earthly, human, temporal understanding of love we have in this life is better experienced in the context of God’s giving, sacrificing, eternal love. It is with God, and with each other, that we discover our completeness.

Consider that God – who we know as the Holy Trinity of God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit – God Himself is a community of three.  Why a community? Because love cannot exist alone, as one. 

A wise man once said that God is three because three is the smallest number of a community. God, therefore, can be – and is – love, and teaches that we are to love those whom he created in His own image … us.

It follows that the great commands of Jesus are to love God, and to love others.

The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, verses 4-7:

“Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always perseveres.”

Notice that the things that cast light on ourselves – envy, boasting, pride, self-seeking – are warned against.  While things that express love, patience, kindness to others, and truth are recommended.

Chapter 13 of the Bible’s New Testament book of 1^st Corinthians is a staple of Christian and even not-so-Christian weddings, as we proclaim the strivings of human love. But the chapter is primarily about God’s perfect love.

Back in verse two, Paul says “if I can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”  Love is how we are completed in God’s eyes.  Our ability to see through to the eyes of God is the gift of Jesus Christ, and of those we love.

The passage also says that we must “put away childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11). That is because we have grown and learned a greater love – a sacrificial love – for others and humility for ourselves.

Yes, in our earthly life we can have many things, talents, desires, dreams, and intentions.  But in the end, Paul says, faith, hope, and love remain; the greatest of these being love.   Love is the greatest because it invites divine relationship, and is God’s language of community, and completion.  

Greg and Lauren, may your lives and love become complete with God, with each other, and with your children, in heaven’s earthly realm. AMEN.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) obtained one of those “online ordinations” to be “legal” for the ceremony, but prior to the ceremony counseled with several personally known and trusted pastors for their blessing and imprimatur for him to officiate.  

Friends: Christianity is uniquely personal and also uniquely relational. Our faith life and communion are not so very different from the divine love within the Holy Trinity.  Blessings, Bob

BTW, there is a new Rich Jacobs "Finding Genius" podcast! Here is the link: Exploring The Culture Of Christianity With Bob Walters (recorded 7-31-24).

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Spirituality Column #926

August 13, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Team Effort

By Bob Walters

“…I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” – Jesus praying, John 17:20-21
One of the lessons of the Holy Trinity – Father, Son, Spirit – and of church gatherings and corporate Christian life in general is that Christianity is not an individual pursuit; it is a team sport. We are all in this together. Yes, with the triune God.

Do we – each one of us, singularly – have a personal and unique faith relationship with God through Jesus? Yes, we do. 

Does the Holy Spirit abide in our lives individually?  Yes, the Spirit does. 

But are we alone in our faith?  No, we are not.

The above cited prayer of Jesus is from the “Priestly Prayer” in John 17, the concluding prayerful words of Jesus to his disciples before His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. To refresh, Jesus and the disciples left the last supper (John 14:31), walked through Jerusalem toward the Garden listening to Jesus’s teaching (John 15-16), and in John 17 Jesus prays for himself (vv1-5), the disciples (vv6-19), and for “all who will believe in me through their message” (vv20-26). That includes us … today.

When Jesus directs us with the two greatest commandments, to love God and to love others (Matthew 22:37-39), and at the last supper reminds the disciples of this “new command … to “love one another” (John 13:35), Jesus is only telling the disciples – and by extension all believers – to do what Jesus himself does in the Holy Trinity … to love God and love others. 

God’s cosmic design is that He Himself is a community, and He created all of us – for His own glory – to be loved and loving, faithful participants in His Kingdom. Our faith in Jesus and reliance on the Holy Spirit bring us into that divine communion.

Perhaps the greatest mystery of our faith is the Holy Trinity – how something can be three in one, one in three, unique, yet together. But don’t get hung up on the math.

For all the different ways the Bible describes God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, when the Bible says in the letters of John that “God is Love,” he is explaining the purpose of the Trinity, and that purpose is relationship, which is what gives communion its meaning.  Love cannot exist without relationship.

God is a community, as we, His faithful, are a community joined with Him and with each other. When we celebrate communion, we are celebrating our relationship not just with God through Jesus and among ourselves as Christians, but celebrating the Father-Son-Spirit relationship that is the abiding and loving truth of our faith. 

Our faith, my faith, your faith, can’t be something we simply “believe.”  Faith is the truth of all being, of how we live our lives.  I don’t merely believe I’m married to my wife Pam; I AM married to Pam.  That’s life and that’s truth … and that is what faith is. 

It is what God calls faith to be: real, the bedrock of our soul.  Faith is not a transient opinion, but life with love, purpose, and direction.  Our communion in faith is the communion into which Jesus invited his disciples, and all who would believe.

The communion we celebrate today as the faithful body of Christ is a communion in faith that is our strength, our hope, and our joy and our oneness in Christ.

To love God and to love each other is a divine team effort, and what Jesus does.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) adapted this from his Aug. 4 communion meditation at church. Regarding the “math” of the Trinity, 1+1+1=3, but 1x1x1=1. Multiply!

Speaking of women’s ministry, there are lots of common reasons young women leave church behind, and lots of great reasons to return.  Here’s a book about it (link to Amazon book purchase site at bottom of column).  - Bob

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Spirituality Column #846

January 31, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Reason to Return

By Bob Walters

“[A church is] a holy community of imperfect saints traveling together toward the Holy City. Won’t you join us?” – author Ericka Anderson, Reason to Return

I’ve never met Ericka Anderson but she is a Christian writer and journalist who lives here in Fishers, Ind.  She has been published in Christianity Today, WORLD, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times and I’m sure, others.

So, a big-time talent with bona fides. I just read her latest book, Reason to Return, with interest and had a few thoughts to share.  Starting with: what a resource.

In retirement I drive a school bus and one of my former bus kids’ moms, who is an attorney and Facebook friend, now has her teenagers at Mission Christian Academy in Fishers where my wife Pam teaches secondary English.  The mom, Joni Sedberry, is Ericka’s good pal and church friend who recently posted about the just-released book.

Joni had fresh copies of the book and in the post offered to send a free copy to the first three people to respond.  The full title grabbed my interest immediately, Reason to Return: Why Women Need the Church and the Church Needs Women.

Ericka’s mission with the book is to encourage women, absent from a Christian congregation for whatever reason, to return to church.  It’s good for them, good for the church, and good for a whole lot of other reasons Ericka thoughtfully presents over the well-written and scripturally rich 225-page book published by Navigators’ NavPress.

Especially targeted are younger women who – in the busyness of life, kids, career, distractions of choice or past experience, and amid growing cultural apathy toward church in general – have taken church membership off their life priority list.  Funny thing is, by a large majority that Ericka notes in various ways throughout the book, spiritual growth and spiritual sanity rank high with women across the board.

The book’s title intrigued me because Pam’s daughter grew up in the church – baptized, youth groups, two involved church parents, the works – but hasn’t had a home church since she was 18.  Today Lauren is a wonderful, hard-working single mother of three with a good job, a nice home, a solid life … and … the title made me think of her.

Her three “littles” are a six-year-old boy and three-year-old boy-girl twins.  Last summer Pam, with my complete agreement and participation, decided we (well, she) would approach Lauren with the idea of us taking the grandkids to church in their town, Danville, Ind., every other weekend when they weren’t gone on visitation.  That meant we’d miss our E91 church a couple times a month or so, and the deal was that whether Lauren went was up to her.  Lauren leapt gratefully at the idea of her kids in church.

Lauren would never have the time or inclination to read a book about going to church.  But by the second Sunday we took the kids to Danville’s Northview Christian Church, Lauren joined us and now it’s on the radar every week, whether we go or not. How can you tell it’s “working”?  The kids are asking if they can go to church.  Bingo.

Reason to Return is a good and comforting read about valuable faith, not a panicked or hysterical diatribe about the “what ifs” of condemnation and hell.  Life is simply better, for everyone, with the right church family.  And girl ... is that ever true.

The God-centered book has as much sensible theology and scripture as it has practical advice and anecdotes about the quality and grace of church membership and participation in a loving, Christ-centered, scripture-believing, community congregation.

Read it for a woman you know – or love – who needs a faith-life boost. Then, share it boldly.  Don’t assume she has time to read it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) appreciates this powerful voice for women’s ministry. 

Amazon purchase link: Reason to Return by Ericka Andersen

Spirituality Column No. 527
December 20, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Cross, Christmas and Freedom
By Bob Walters