"When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love."

"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth."
 
"Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen."

"Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.
 
These are words of love from a child’s point of view.
 
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because he has anointed me
To bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To let the oppressed go free,
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
 
These are words of love from God’s point of view. They are words spoken by Jesus as he read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah - words that Jesus says he fulfills. When Jesus rolls up that scroll sits down and says: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” he embarks on a journey of ministry that lives out these words every step of the way. He embarks on a journey meant to show us what God’s love really looks like. In his ministry Jesus touches those no one else would touch, heals those that society had pushed aside and shares a meal with those that society of that day wouldn’t even have given the time of day. Jesus shows us that God’s love is a radical inclusive kind of love.
 
In his life Jesus broke all the barriers that society had established even the deepest division of all: that between Gentile and Jew. In the end, God’s radical inclusive love revealed in the life of Jesus so upset the religious leaders of the day he ended up nailed to a cross of wood. Jesus died trying to show the world a new way of living – a way characterized by love – love that reaches to all people. Love that includes all. Love that sees no divisions between people, but instead looking through God’s eyes sees only God’s beloved children.
 
Even though radical, inclusive love is God’s mission… God’s Church has often struggled with this concept. Even the early Christians that St. Paul writes to in Corinth are struggling with divisions between the rich and the poor – those with the power and those whom the powerful are keeping down – those who have claimed themselves as inside and those who they deem are outside the bounds of God’s love. It’s for this reason that St. Paul writes: “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
 
I wonder if we polled those outside the church about what the defining characteristic of the Christian church is today if they would answer radical, inclusive love. I fear they might not answer love, but rather judgment. I fear those outside the church – and maybe some inside the church might say that the church is best known for worldly, divisive, judgment. I fear that people know the church more for pointing fingers and excluding those some have decided are outside of God’s love… especially those in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities, than the radical, inclusive love that Jesus died on the cross to show us. I fear for many the Church has become “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”
 
In fact a book entitled “You Lost Me” - written by David Kinnaman, the president of Barna Group, a leading research firm focused on the intersection of faith and culture bears out my fears: Kinnaman says: Overall, the research uncovered six significant themes why nearly three out of every five young Christians (59%) disconnect either permanently or for an extended period of time from church life after age 15. One of those reasons is: Christianity is too “exclusive” — you’re either one of them or you’re the enemy.
 
This is frustrating to me because we all know that this judgmental/angry/finger-pointing exclusive Christianity is not the Christianity of all of Christ’s church and yet it’s often the Christianity that makes the news. Because of this we must continue to restate and lift up our commitment to be different.
 
So today, as we celebrate 10 years as a Reconciling in Christ Congregation, we boldly reaffirm our commitment to be a community that seeks to live out the radical, inclusive love that Jesus died to reveal to the world – the radical inclusive love that God desires for our world. Today we reaffirm our commitment to a ministry that welcomes ALL of God’s children. We reaffirm our mission to extend God’s extravagant welcome and a genuine invitation for acceptance and full inclusion to:
          People of every age, class, color, and ethnic origin….
People of all sexual orientations and gender identities….
People who are single, married, divorced, separated, blessed or partnered….
People who are temporarily-able, disabled, or of differing abilities….
 
And we ask God, the giver of life and all creation, to guide our ways in living out this ministry of reconciliation always seeking to follow in the steps of Jesus – always seeking to live out the radical, inclusive love Jesus died to reveal to the world.  Amen.