Who have you chosen to serve?

 

It's easy in America to live a duplicitous life. To live a life that looks pious and good on the outside. To hold up the values of freedom and equality with one hand, but then hide behind our back the truth of our convictions. It is so very simple to serve a God of love and grace on Sunday but then turn Him into one of vengeance and wrath the other six days. We want all the grace for ourselves and our sins, but have little left over for the sibling in Christ attending a different church. 

Aren't we called to do better? To be the example of love and mercy the world can look at and say, "Yes, that is a way that brings peace. It brings unity. These people are different than anyone else I have ever met." We are to be known by our love. Not by our political pundits or segregation. Not by the pastors and teachers using hate-speech and rhetoric to blind their followers and line their own coffers. We should be ashamed of being a people known more for what we are against than what we are for. 

You see it don't you? The call in our Word showing us how to be with one another. In every single book of the Bible the command is there. To serve others justly. Showing mercy to the widow and orphan. Our founder and Savior walked with the poor. He sat at the tables of the lowest classes. He called friend the one that didn't fit at any of the established tables of His culture and time. And because there weren't any other tables for His group to sit at, Christ made a new one. Genesis to Revelation draws attention to our work of caring for the ones that need justice, a voice, a home. Providing meals and water to the foreigner, widow and poor is a foundational part of our calling as Christians. 

I ask again, 'Who are you serving?' Are you serving the God in our Bible? The one who already had a plan for Salvation even before Eden was lost. The communal God who then laid out the laws for the Israelites that included provision for foreigners to be brought into the fold. The God who later disciplined His children who were NOT obeying the fundamentals of their laws. Then came Jesus. God Incarnate who shows us how to live with each other. Who shows us how to walk in the in-between of both Heaven and Earth. Jesus who shows us how to honor the woman at the well and the ruling authorities while challenging them both to a different way of living. This is the God we serve. Further on we see the church, little 'c' church, being formed. As they are being established and grown, Paul lays out some basics for them. And at the root it always comes back to Loving God, loving your neighbor. 

We aren't called to live a life of division. A life of us versus them. We have been called to a life of radical unity.  Our churches should be the first place with its doors open to welcome in the lost and hurting. Churches are meant to be hospitals, not debate halls. We are to be living a life that highlights love and banishes differences. A love that walks past the pulpit of their own denomination and goes across the street to meet their brothers and sisters there. It's a love and lifestyle so radical it STANDS
OUT from the lifestyles of the culture around it. 

As believers in Christ it is our commanded duty to reach out a hand to help the hurting, feed the hungry, give a drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, care for the sick and visit those in prison. These require relationship and intentionality. It means putting aside our differences for the work of Christ. Making a martyr of our principles and pedestals for the sake of Christ. When I come before the judgement seat of Christ, I want to hear that I have done the work Jesus asks me to do. Isn't that what you want as well?