From a Pastor’s heart to yours…..

From a Pastor’s heart to yours…..

“‘Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your strength and with all of your mind’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ “

       The Great Commandment, Luke 10:27 niv

      What better way could we approach this new year of 2012 than to return to the rock solid core of our faith as found in the Luke 10:27?  In his outstanding book Primalmy favorite author, Rev. Mark Batterson, reminds us that we Christians need to become great at this Great Commandment and settle for nothing else.

     The last reformation dates back to the early sixteenth century.  Pope Leo X was raising funds to build St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and the primary means of fund-raising indulgences.  One of those fund-raisers, an itinerant preacher named Johann Tetzel, coined this catchy jingle:  “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.”  In essence, salvation was for sale.  And people were led to believe that each coin put into the coffer paid down time spent in purgatory.

     By the year 1509, a depository of more than five thousand holy relics had been accumulated by Frederick the Wise, who wanted to make Wittenberg the Rome of Germany.  The purported relics included a thorn from the crown of Christ, a twig from the burning bush, a piece of gold from the gift of the wise men, and a piece of bread from the Last Supper.  The collection also included thousands of holy bones from dead saints.  Each relic was given a chronological value.  Viewing the bone of a dead saint, for example, was worth a reduction of four thousand years spent in purgatory.  One of the silver coins paid to Judas?  Fourteen hundred years.  Add it all up, and the total value of the collection of holy relics was 1,902,202 years and 270 days.  Once a year, on All Saints’ Day, all of those relics were put on display in Wittenberg, Germany.  And it was the day before All Saints’ Day, October 31, 1517, when one man challenged the status quo and changed the course of history.

     No one knows where a reformation will begin or who will lead it.  It often happens in unlikely places and is led by unlikely people.  And a monk named Martin Luther was as unlikely a candidate as anybody. 

     Luther was a devout monk.  Like the other monks in his order, he was awakened by the cloister bell at two o'clock in the morning and began the first of seven prayer cycles. His confessions lasted up to six hours. And he would often fast for three days on end without so much as a crumb of bread. Luther said of himself, “I was a good monk, and I kept the rule of my order so strictly that I may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery it was I.”

     Then, in the fall of 1516, Martin Luther was teaching through the book of Romans at the University of Wittenberg when he came to this scripture: “The just shall live by faith.” Luther experienced a theological tipping point. He said, “This passage of Paul became to me the gate of heaven.”  And the rediscovery of a simple truth - sola fide, by faith alone - became the rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation.

     Now let me make an all-important observation.  If you miss this, you miss the soul of this book.  Reformations are not born out of new discoveries. Those are often called cults. Reformations are born out of rediscovering something ancient, something primal. They are born out of primal truths rediscovered, reimagined, and radically reapplied to our lives.  So what does our generation need to rediscover? What primal truth needs to be reimagined? What is our reformation?

     Simply put, we’ve got to be great at the Great Commandment.  Anything less isn’t good enough. Or, I should say, great enough. We must not succeed at the wrong thing. We must not invest our earthly lives in things that have no heavenly value. We must not be great at things that do not matter. We have to be great at what matters most. And what matters most is loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

     When you descend the flight of stairs into the soul of Christianity and everything is stripped away but its primal essence, what you’re left with is the Great Commandment. Just as the medieval church rediscovered justification by faith, so our generation must rediscover the Great Commandment. The rallying cry of the last reformation was “Sola fide.” The rallying cry of the next reformation is “Amo Dei.”

     Translation: “Love God.”

Friends, let’s make 2012 a great year by becoming great in what matters most……loving the One who made us and loving everyone He has made.  See you Sunday and never forget that God loves you and I do too!!.......Bill

PRAYER FOR 2012:  May God’s Great Commandment transform my life, my family and my Church of LGUMC till living in Christ becomes as normal and natural as breathing itself.