Christmas is almost here! I hope you are finishing up your shopping and have plans to attend worship on Christmas Eve. Christmas, after all, isn't Christmas without the worship of the Christ Child. May you be filled with peace, hope, joy and love this week and all year long.
click for audio of the sermon or read below:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/abu3i9p3bds617x/6%BA%20of%20Love.mp3
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“6º of Love: Messiah Complex & Jesus, the Messiah”
Brimfield Faith UMC / December 19, 2010
Matthew 1:18-25
GOD’S LOVE
Christmas is almost here. How many of you are done with your Christmas shopping? How many haven’t started? We are done with our Christmas shopping. Christmas shopping isn’t one of my strong suites. I pretty much have one person I am responsible for and that is Michelle. She does everyone else. The honest truth is that I’m not a good gift giver. When Michelle and I were just dating, I gave her a stuffed animal that I bought at a garage sale. I think it qualifies as one of the worst gifts ever. I’ve worked hard over the years to be better at it but it isn’t my strong suite. Giving gifts is just one way that we can show our love and appreciation to other people. I am good at showing love through words of affirmation and spending quality time.
Sometimes I wish we didn’t have to do the whole gift giving thing as a way to show our love for others. Anybody share that sentiment? Nonetheless, gift giving is an important way that we express our love to one another. We have been preparing over the past four weeks to receive the ultimate gift of God’s son, Jesus Christ. When done with the right heart, the practice of giving and receiving gifts help to reconnect us to God and his love.
This series, “6º of Advent,” has been all about reconnecting to God in the midst of a chaotic Christmas season. Each week we have started with one thing and in six degrees moved to something new. This morning, we are looking at the 6º of love: messiah complex and Jesus, the messiah. We are going to seek to reconnect with love and we seek to reconnect Christmas and Christ.
DEGREES 1 – 3
1º Messiah Complex is the belief that a person is destined to be a savior. Although it is not an official psychological diagnosis, it is a common label given to people who think they can save the world or a sports organization (no names). Many of our superhero films, such as Superman, Batman, and Spiderman, have helped to perpetrate the messiah complex myth. Messiah CompleX was also a character in the X-Men Comic Book Series.
2 º The X-Men are a superhero team in the Marvel Comics Universe. It is a series about humans that have mutated and possess superhuman powers. The series was made popular in the form of several movies. The epic struggle is against two sets of mutants: Professor Xavier and his school of young mutants vs. Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants. Magneto has the ability to control metal and in early issues of the story is accused of megalomania.
3º Megalomania is a delusional mental disorder that is defined by an obsession with extravagant things or actions. It is also marked with delusional fantasies of wealth, power, grandeur and feelings of personal omnipotence.
BARRIERS OF LOVE
As we beginning the journey through love, we should begin to realize there are barriers along the way. It probably is not news that there are even more barriers to love during the Christmas season than we might imagine. Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy, peace, hope and love and many times is it just the opposite. We went shopping on Monday. It wasn’t a crowded day due to the storm. The lines were short and yet there was still a man vocally complaining about the lines. He was clearly missing the point. I want to identify several barriers to love, barriers that prevent us from both giving and receiving love. While there are many barriers to love, I want to suggest three this morning that I believe are pertinent during the holiday season.
One barrier to love is unresolved anger.
When we live in relations with other people, they will occasionally do things that annoy us, bother us, and even wrong us. These feelings of injustice can produce anger within our hearts. Jesus teaches us that anger in itself is not wrong, but warns us not to sin in our anger. Anger becomes a problem when we hold onto it and fail to forgive. Forgiveness can be defined as the letting go of anger towards another person or his actions. Unresolved anger and unforgiveness can produce feelings of hatred. These feelings us hatred cause us to withdraw from others and prevent us from experiencing the love of other and God. Hatred can become all-consuming and becomes a major barrier to love.
The Holiday Season is a perfect time for unresolved anger to surface. Christmas, after all, is a time when we reconnect with family members and “loved ones.” Often, we haven’t seen these people in months. The initially reunion is blissful and then you remember why you haven’t seen Aunt Suzie. Unresolved anger and unforgiveness quickly make their holiday appearance halfway through the dinner conversation. If we are going to experience love in its fullness, we must work through our anger and frustration with other people.
In Leviticus 19:17-18 it says, “You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. 18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” The opposite of hatred is love. We move towards loving others and being loved by others by letting go of our anger and forgiving others.
Another barrier to love is pride.
Letting go of our anger and learn to forgive can be a difficult act. We often feel entitled to the anger we feel or think our unforgiveness is protecting us. The reality is these emotions are hurting us more than anyone else. If we are going to move past them, we must embrace humility. That is why the second barrier to love is pride.
At its root, pride is an over exaggerated sense of self worth. Pride is loving one’s own excellence above anything else. It is the belief that we don’t need God nor anyone’s help. A prideful spirit will alienate from the ability to give or receive love. Pride believes no one else is worthy of your love and that you do not need anyone else’s love and affirmation.
At Christmastime, an arrogant spirit will prevent you from graciously and joyfully receiving gifts. The arrogant people think that they deserve the best from everyone. When the gifts don’t come or aren’t as good as expected, they become anger and resentful. This creates a cycle in which a prideful person cannot receive love.
The first degree of the six degrees of love is a form a form. The messiah complex is delusional pride. The messiah complex isn’t just a desire to help the world but the belief that you are the only person that can save the world, help a person in crisis or fix a given problem. A messiah complex creates a lone ranger mentality that alienates a person from meaningful, loving relationships.
These are just two of many barriers to experience love. If you feel a lack of love, you probably have something blocking it. Therefore, it is important that you recognize the barriers in your own life to love. As we move to the final three degrees of love, we will be looking towards how we can receive the gift of love.
DEGREES 4 – 6
4º Omnipotence is to have unlimited authority and power to make things happen. Omnipotence is one of three ‘omni’ attributes of God. The other two are omnipresence, which means God can be in all places at all times, and omniscience, which means God has infinite knowledge and understanding of all things.
5 º Attributes of God are qualities that we associate with the God of the Bible. While there are numerous different attributes of God, in the New Testament, the primary moral attribute of God is love. In 1 John 4:8, it affirms that “God is love.” Since God is love, he gave humanity free will so that they would have the ability to choose love.
6 º Free will gives us the ability to reject God’s love and to be disobedient. This free will allowed sin to enter into the world. Without a remedy, our sinfulness promises to eternally separates us from relationship with God. Thankfully, God made a way to restore us through his only Son. When we accept Jesus, the Messiah into our hearts, we receive God’s ultimate expression of love.
RECEIVING LOVE - EMMANUEL
The final three degrees of love move away from self-centered, hatred and towards selfless, God love. As we seek to break down the barriers of love, we need to remember that God is the source of all love. To find lasting, true love one must look towards God. While we remove the barriers, it becomes important to understand the ways in which love is shared.
Gary Chapman wrote a book called, The Five Love Languages. In it he speaks about five main ways that people experience love. He lists them as: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. While I believe that God expresses his love for his children through all of these means, but I believe one is especially important to God. That is quality time.
In Matthew 1, we heard the story of Mary’s pregnancy. Listen to the words again. “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit… Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” One of the names of Jesus was Emmanuel which means “God is with us.”
God loves us so much that he wants to spent time with us. He could have just sent down blessings in the form of an abundant harvest. Or he could have just sent his Word to us in the form of the Bible. He could have looked to serve us by giving us good jobs. While he expresses his love in these ways, he comes down as Jesus and lived among us. He continues to give us the gift of his presence. There is no greater way to experience the love of God than through spending quality time in his presence. That is why we talk about the presence of the Holy Spirit in worship. Sure we want to hear God’s affirmation and receive his gifts, but before anything else, we want to spend time in his presence. God’s desire is to dwell among his people and to fill us with his presence. This is the gift of love in Jesus Christ. This is the point of the story, to restore relationship with us, his children.
SHARING LOVE
Are you ready to enter into God’s presence and dwell in his love there? As we conclude this morning, the last Sunday before Christmas, let us be reminded there are many people in the world that don’t know Christ’s loving presence. It is not enough to simply receive God’s love, but we need to share God’s love with the world. Invite someone this week to Christmas Eve worship and to experience God’s love in greater fullness this year. The gift is for everyone and we are called to be barrier wreckers. We can knock down others barriers to God’s love through a simple invitation.
Will you invite someone to experience God’s love this Christmas? Will you help them to pull down barriers and reconnect with God?
Brimfield Faith UMC / December 19, 2010
Matthew 1:18-25
GOD’S LOVE
Christmas is almost here. How many of you are done with your Christmas shopping? How many haven’t started? We are done with our Christmas shopping. Christmas shopping isn’t one of my strong suites. I pretty much have one person I am responsible for and that is Michelle. She does everyone else. The honest truth is that I’m not a good gift giver. When Michelle and I were just dating, I gave her a stuffed animal that I bought at a garage sale. I think it qualifies as one of the worst gifts ever. I’ve worked hard over the years to be better at it but it isn’t my strong suite. Giving gifts is just one way that we can show our love and appreciation to other people. I am good at showing love through words of affirmation and spending quality time.
Sometimes I wish we didn’t have to do the whole gift giving thing as a way to show our love for others. Anybody share that sentiment? Nonetheless, gift giving is an important way that we express our love to one another. We have been preparing over the past four weeks to receive the ultimate gift of God’s son, Jesus Christ. When done with the right heart, the practice of giving and receiving gifts help to reconnect us to God and his love.
This series, “6º of Advent,” has been all about reconnecting to God in the midst of a chaotic Christmas season. Each week we have started with one thing and in six degrees moved to something new. This morning, we are looking at the 6º of love: messiah complex and Jesus, the messiah. We are going to seek to reconnect with love and we seek to reconnect Christmas and Christ.
DEGREES 1 – 3
1º Messiah Complex is the belief that a person is destined to be a savior. Although it is not an official psychological diagnosis, it is a common label given to people who think they can save the world or a sports organization (no names). Many of our superhero films, such as Superman, Batman, and Spiderman, have helped to perpetrate the messiah complex myth. Messiah CompleX was also a character in the X-Men Comic Book Series.
2 º The X-Men are a superhero team in the Marvel Comics Universe. It is a series about humans that have mutated and possess superhuman powers. The series was made popular in the form of several movies. The epic struggle is against two sets of mutants: Professor Xavier and his school of young mutants vs. Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants. Magneto has the ability to control metal and in early issues of the story is accused of megalomania.
3º Megalomania is a delusional mental disorder that is defined by an obsession with extravagant things or actions. It is also marked with delusional fantasies of wealth, power, grandeur and feelings of personal omnipotence.
BARRIERS OF LOVE
As we beginning the journey through love, we should begin to realize there are barriers along the way. It probably is not news that there are even more barriers to love during the Christmas season than we might imagine. Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy, peace, hope and love and many times is it just the opposite. We went shopping on Monday. It wasn’t a crowded day due to the storm. The lines were short and yet there was still a man vocally complaining about the lines. He was clearly missing the point. I want to identify several barriers to love, barriers that prevent us from both giving and receiving love. While there are many barriers to love, I want to suggest three this morning that I believe are pertinent during the holiday season.
One barrier to love is unresolved anger.
When we live in relations with other people, they will occasionally do things that annoy us, bother us, and even wrong us. These feelings of injustice can produce anger within our hearts. Jesus teaches us that anger in itself is not wrong, but warns us not to sin in our anger. Anger becomes a problem when we hold onto it and fail to forgive. Forgiveness can be defined as the letting go of anger towards another person or his actions. Unresolved anger and unforgiveness can produce feelings of hatred. These feelings us hatred cause us to withdraw from others and prevent us from experiencing the love of other and God. Hatred can become all-consuming and becomes a major barrier to love.
The Holiday Season is a perfect time for unresolved anger to surface. Christmas, after all, is a time when we reconnect with family members and “loved ones.” Often, we haven’t seen these people in months. The initially reunion is blissful and then you remember why you haven’t seen Aunt Suzie. Unresolved anger and unforgiveness quickly make their holiday appearance halfway through the dinner conversation. If we are going to experience love in its fullness, we must work through our anger and frustration with other people.
In Leviticus 19:17-18 it says, “You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. 18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” The opposite of hatred is love. We move towards loving others and being loved by others by letting go of our anger and forgiving others.
Another barrier to love is pride.
Letting go of our anger and learn to forgive can be a difficult act. We often feel entitled to the anger we feel or think our unforgiveness is protecting us. The reality is these emotions are hurting us more than anyone else. If we are going to move past them, we must embrace humility. That is why the second barrier to love is pride.
At its root, pride is an over exaggerated sense of self worth. Pride is loving one’s own excellence above anything else. It is the belief that we don’t need God nor anyone’s help. A prideful spirit will alienate from the ability to give or receive love. Pride believes no one else is worthy of your love and that you do not need anyone else’s love and affirmation.
At Christmastime, an arrogant spirit will prevent you from graciously and joyfully receiving gifts. The arrogant people think that they deserve the best from everyone. When the gifts don’t come or aren’t as good as expected, they become anger and resentful. This creates a cycle in which a prideful person cannot receive love.
The first degree of the six degrees of love is a form a form. The messiah complex is delusional pride. The messiah complex isn’t just a desire to help the world but the belief that you are the only person that can save the world, help a person in crisis or fix a given problem. A messiah complex creates a lone ranger mentality that alienates a person from meaningful, loving relationships.
These are just two of many barriers to experience love. If you feel a lack of love, you probably have something blocking it. Therefore, it is important that you recognize the barriers in your own life to love. As we move to the final three degrees of love, we will be looking towards how we can receive the gift of love.
DEGREES 4 – 6
4º Omnipotence is to have unlimited authority and power to make things happen. Omnipotence is one of three ‘omni’ attributes of God. The other two are omnipresence, which means God can be in all places at all times, and omniscience, which means God has infinite knowledge and understanding of all things.
5 º Attributes of God are qualities that we associate with the God of the Bible. While there are numerous different attributes of God, in the New Testament, the primary moral attribute of God is love. In 1 John 4:8, it affirms that “God is love.” Since God is love, he gave humanity free will so that they would have the ability to choose love.
6 º Free will gives us the ability to reject God’s love and to be disobedient. This free will allowed sin to enter into the world. Without a remedy, our sinfulness promises to eternally separates us from relationship with God. Thankfully, God made a way to restore us through his only Son. When we accept Jesus, the Messiah into our hearts, we receive God’s ultimate expression of love.
RECEIVING LOVE - EMMANUEL
The final three degrees of love move away from self-centered, hatred and towards selfless, God love. As we seek to break down the barriers of love, we need to remember that God is the source of all love. To find lasting, true love one must look towards God. While we remove the barriers, it becomes important to understand the ways in which love is shared.
Gary Chapman wrote a book called, The Five Love Languages. In it he speaks about five main ways that people experience love. He lists them as: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. While I believe that God expresses his love for his children through all of these means, but I believe one is especially important to God. That is quality time.
In Matthew 1, we heard the story of Mary’s pregnancy. Listen to the words again. “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit… Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” One of the names of Jesus was Emmanuel which means “God is with us.”
God loves us so much that he wants to spent time with us. He could have just sent down blessings in the form of an abundant harvest. Or he could have just sent his Word to us in the form of the Bible. He could have looked to serve us by giving us good jobs. While he expresses his love in these ways, he comes down as Jesus and lived among us. He continues to give us the gift of his presence. There is no greater way to experience the love of God than through spending quality time in his presence. That is why we talk about the presence of the Holy Spirit in worship. Sure we want to hear God’s affirmation and receive his gifts, but before anything else, we want to spend time in his presence. God’s desire is to dwell among his people and to fill us with his presence. This is the gift of love in Jesus Christ. This is the point of the story, to restore relationship with us, his children.
SHARING LOVE
Are you ready to enter into God’s presence and dwell in his love there? As we conclude this morning, the last Sunday before Christmas, let us be reminded there are many people in the world that don’t know Christ’s loving presence. It is not enough to simply receive God’s love, but we need to share God’s love with the world. Invite someone this week to Christmas Eve worship and to experience God’s love in greater fullness this year. The gift is for everyone and we are called to be barrier wreckers. We can knock down others barriers to God’s love through a simple invitation.
Will you invite someone to experience God’s love this Christmas? Will you help them to pull down barriers and reconnect with God?
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