Learning From and With Our God of Unconditional Love (Together, in a Variety of Ways)

“Entrusting Ourselves to God’s Love, Care, and Mercy” – Jeremiah 17:5-10, 1 Corinthians 15:12-20,

Luke 6:17-26

In whom or what do you trust? As Christians, we participate with God in the mission of justice and salvation. And fear should not inhibit our words and deeds for and on behalf of others, particularly those who are suffering. As Gradye Parsons reminds us in Our Connectional Church, being internally strong in the things of God will make us effective, externally, in the World that God loves when he writes,

North Avenue [Presbyterian Church in Atlanta] began in the 1990s to pray about how to reach people who are significantly different from its membership…as the church was thinking about being internally strong and externally focused, a research paper entitled ‘Hidden in Plain View’ came to its attention…the study identified the city of Atlanta as a major hub for human trafficking of children, kids under the age of seventeen.[1]

As the pastor and my friend, the Rev. Dr. Scott Weimer and the leaders at North Avenue read this paper, they discovered that the street corner on which the church campus was situated was identified as a location that was especially problematic for the trafficking of children. Those children, every human being, you, and I are made in the image of God. We are wired to live in relationship with God and others. Because of that truth, you can entrust your life to God’s unconditional love, care, and mercy. How do we do it?

The paralysis that sets in when we are asked to think outside the box is best characterized by preoccupation. To be preoccupied is “to dominate or engross the mind of something or someone to the exclusion of other thoughts.”[2] For example, you have just been diagnosed with cancer. You are driving home from the doctor’s appointment. You begin to think through outcomes. The next thing you know you are driving thirty miles an hour in a school zone when the yellow light is flashing. You get pulled over by a police officer and are issued a ticket. Your preoccupation with the cancer diagnosis sent you into a world that made you unaware of how fast you were driving.

To be preoccupied with God is a good thing. In 1 Corinthians we glean this: Easter Sunday is connected to every Sunday that follows. Think of all the times we have been told we are worthless and there is no hope for us to be any different than we are. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead guarantees all future resurrections from “death patterns” of living, let alone our literal physical death to come. Beth Felker Jones writes, “…the connection between Jesus and us is so intimate, so deep, and so real that his resurrection guarantees our future hope…Because of Jesus, ‘the dead’ have hope.”[3] Jeremiah indicates we have the propensity to do both good and bad things; that our intentions, motives, and decisions are never pure or without blemish. We are selfish and God centered. Our words and actions bear good and bad fruit. Yet, the more we rest in the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the benefits in knowing and experiencing that God’s unconditional love, care, and mercy for and toward us always wins, the inclination of our heart will lean more toward grace, forgiveness, and love for others. And Luke reminds us that people really do want to know Jesus. People wanted to hear Jesus teach. They wanted their diseases to be healed. And they wanted to be transformed by the Messiah to live God’s intended destiny for them. [4]

Is it the case today that people want Jesus? Some do. Deep within, everyone does. Therein lies the opportunity for authentic relationships of love, care, and mercy. Christians can be a blessing to those who are marginalized from the love, care, and mercy of God. And from others as well for that matter. How can you make progress in being set free from a worldview and lifestyle of self-centeredness to begin a life of authentically serving and loving others into trusting God’s love, care, and mercy for them? Take responsibility for the things in your life that you find not loving, caring, or merciful. Avoid affixing blame. Develop an action plan to move forward.

Grace Presbyterian Church is becoming internally stronger in the basic practice of loving God and loving others. And focusing on unity, despite our differences, is making headway. Our external focus begs the question, who is our neighbor? Immigration, refugees, homelessness, the impact of “white privilege” both positively and negatively, and economic disparity show us our neighbors. Who is your neighbor? How do you engage him or her? Donald K. McKim writes, “Trust is faith. Trust is enacted faith…Faith is the trust that responds to Jesus’ command: ‘Follow me.’ Faith is the trust to love others. Faith is the trust to continue living as God desires and as Jesus showed us.”[5] Living as God desires is easier said than done. Why? It takes courage.

I’ve been thinking a lot these past weeks about courage. What might a courageous Christian look like?

• A person who values their personal faith convictions more than their allegiance to a political party.
• Christians who will say that bigotry, wrapped in religion, is still bigotry.
• Christians, saying that Christianity was never supposed to be about power or America being first.
• A Christian who asserts that diversity, equity, and inclusion is at the heart of everything Jesus was doing when he was here and continues to do through his followers today.
• Christians who will say no more to a Jesus-less Christianity.

I believe that the American Church is at a turning point. That turning point is to shed irrelevance, uselessness, prejudice, selfishness, and moral bankruptcy and begin the rebirth of being the living, loving, and forgiving presence of Jesus.

Can we, the Christians of Grace Presbyterian Church, grow in our defense of the millions of vulnerable people who are being sacrificed on the altar of hateful people’s phobias, privileged people’s convenience, or fearful people’s cowardice?[6]

Respond to God’s love for you in Jesus Christ. Accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord. Be “born again.” Reaffirm your faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Entrust yourself to God’s love, care, and mercy. Serve and love real people who live in a real world who have real needs. Amen.

This sermon was preached on the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, 16 February 2025

by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh in the Great Room and Sanctuary  

at Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas

Copyright 2025

Steven M. Marsh

All rights reserved.

[1]Gradye Parsons, Our Connectional Church (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 43.

[2]Concise Oxford Dictionary Tenth Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1129.

[3]Beth Felker Jones in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery and Cynthia L. Rigby, editors, Connections, Year C, Volume 1 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 248.

[4]In preparation of this sermon, I have benefited from the thinking of L. Daniel Hawk, Donald K. McKim, Rhodora E. Beaton, Mark Abbott, Beth Felker Jones, Wes Avram, and Robert F. Darden in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby and Carolyn J. Sharp, editors, Connections, Year C, Volume 1 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 239-241, 242-243, 244-245, 246-248, 248-249, 250-252, and 252-254.

[5]Donald K. McKim in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery and Cynthia L. Rigby, editors, Connections, Year C, Volume 1, 243.

[6]Steven Marsh, “A Word From Our Interim Pastor” in Grace This Week, February 16, 2025.

Learning From and With Our God of Unconditional Love (Together, in a Variety of Ways)

“Breaking Out of Routine Love” – Isaiah 6:1-8, Luke 5:1-11

You can live your life out of a place of love, yes, even unconditional love. Jesus has given us the grace we need to keep putting one foot in front of the other. In Christ, we can do what needs to be done.

To experience love and to love, we need a personal encounter with God and one that is ongoing. Believing is important, but unless beliefs transform us, and are put into action, beliefs are useless. In Jesus Christ, we are a new creation. A personal encounter with God leads us to participate with God in God’s mission. Mark Abbott, Director of Hispanic Distributed Learning, Asbury Theological Seminary writes, “In both Isaiah and Luke, personal encounter with God leads to missional engagement and is not an end in itself.”[1] A personal relationship with God is the means to break out of routine love.

William Carey had an ongoing personal encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. Early on in his ministry, as an ordained Baptist minister in the late 18^th century, Carey was at a gathering of ministers for a theological forum on a variety of issues. One of the senior ministers asked Carey for a theme to discuss to which Carey replied, “May we consider whether the command given to the apostles to teach all nations was not obligatory on all succeeding ministers to the end of the world, seeing that the accompanying promise was of equal extent.” Dr. Ryland promptly denounced Carey, “Sit down young man! When God chooses to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid or mine!”

Simon Peter, like William Carey, had an ongoing personal encounter with Jesus. The story in Luke is set in the early days of Jesus’ ministry. After a day’s activity, Jesus paused at the lake of Gennesaret. Simon Peter, James, John and other fishermen had just returned from fishing all-night having caught no fish. The text intimates that Jesus was some distance away and a crowd had gathered around him to hear him teach. Jesus seized the moment to use a real-life situation to teach the disciples and crowd about his true identity. Shortly after Jesus and the crowd meandered over to Simon Peter and his partners, Jesus got into the boat and told Simon Peter to go out a way from the shore into deep water and cast his nets for a catch. Simon Peter did as Jesus asked and the text tells us that they caught so many fish their nets began to break. Simon Peter called to shore for his partners to come out and fill their boats. He had been a fisherman for years. Simon Peter knew his trade. But now, with his boats full to overflowing, he had a crisis of faith. Simon Peter didn’t believe that Jesus could get a catch of fish any more than he could. Simon Peter’s sin was his disbelief.[2]

William Carey did not “sit down.” William Carey “stood up and stepped out” and founded the Missionary Society to India. Transformation occurs in everyday, real-life situations through believing. Obeying Jesus and his Word moves us out of routine love to love that is self-giving, authentic, and transformational. As Gradye Parsons reminds us in Our Connectional Church, showing up is more than half the battle for experiencing transformation when he writes,

The few members of Spring City Presbyterian Church showed up. Showing up may not seem like a large accomplishment, but it is. As the saying goes, 90% of life is showing up. The people of the church didn’t just show up at church, they showed up outside the four walls of the building where many people have negative views of a church they see as too judgmental. So, we have to overcome that perception by revealing a different picture of the church.[3]

It is living your life in authenticity that speaks the loudest to the skeptical.

Jesus has a call on your life. Listen to this 19^th century illustration of a life changing experience for a group of young men:

Awakenings started the foreign missions movement in America, and American missionary work started in a haystack, during a thunderstorm! In 1806, during an awakening at Williams College in Western Massachusetts, Samuel Mills and four other students hid themselves in a haystack to avoid a summer thunderstorm. While there they united in prayer, and pledged themselves to go as missionaries wherever God might lead them. Out of this group went the first American missionaries. Some of the best impulses for social reform in America’s history have come from awakenings. The anti-slavery movement in America was mainly a part of the reform movement generated by the Second Great Awakening, as were movements for prison reform, child labor laws, women’s rights, inner-city missions, and many more.[4]

Yes, following Jesus often has the frustration of working hard with little if any results. Do not forget that God’s grace and blessings are often more than you expect. The church is full of religious people with whom you cannot relate. The church, however, is either a hospital for imperfect sinners, or it is “the champagne toast of the spiritually proud.”

Jesus meets you in your sense of inadequacy. Stephen Mattson writes, “Following Christ implores us to pledge allegiance to Jesus above any earthly king, leader, political party, or government. Our loyalty is to Jesus and our duty is to love our neighbors. This should be prioritized above anything else.”[5] May your response to Jesus’s call be one of loyalty. Follow him whenever and wherever he goes. Break out of routine love by believing that showing up changes things. Amen.

 This sermon was preached on the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, 09 February 2025

by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh in the Great Room and Sanctuary

at Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas

Copyright Ó 2025

Steven M. Marsh

All rights reserved.

[1]Mark Abbott in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery and Cynthia L. Rigby, editors, Connections, Year C, Volume 1 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 233.

[2]In preparation of this sermon, I have benefited from the thinking of Brent A. Strawn, Stacey Simpson Duke, Rhodora E. Beaton, Mark Abbott, Beth Felker Jones, Warren Carter, and Blair R. Monie in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby and Carolyn J. Sharp, editors, Connections, Year C, Volume 1 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 223-225, 225-227, 228-230, 231-233, 233-234, 235-237, and 237-238.

[3]Gradye Parsons, Our Connectional Church (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 32.

[4]Taken from “Spiritual Awakenings in North America,” Christian History, no. 23.

[5]Taken from John D’Elia’s FB post, Saturday, February 8, 2025.