Sunday, April 10, 2016
Sunday Reflection: One Action, Two Great Commandments
This morning I will be giving the sermon at First Covenant Church in Minneapolis, a place I dearly love. If you are interested, the church is at 810 South 7th Street in Minneapolis, right across from the new stadium.
It's going to be a little bit of an art history lecture (I have a bunch of slides). I am going to read a poem by Reginald Dwayne Betts. I'll probably tell some stories. A lot of it is going to be about my dad and his work. The text for the sermon is Matthew 25, starting at verse 34-- where Jesus tells his followers that when they visit those in prison, they visit him.
It's a startling thing for Jesus to say. It his revelation of where we need to go to see the face of Jesus: We need to find the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, we need to find the stranger and those in prison. All of the outcasts... and then we will find Jesus. That's not my teaching; it is His.
And if we do that, it achieves this remarkable thing: We fulfill both of the Great Commandments at once. We love God, and we love our neighbor.
And that simple truth never occurred to me before this week. How did I miss that?
