"Why, Soitenly!"

[Today is Dr. Ortberg's conclusion to his sermon, The Scandal of Love. He makes application to his church in the Bay area of Northern California. It is just as applicable to you and me and where we worship.]

I was thinking this week: What if this place became known all over for the Scandal of Love?

What if word started to spread that no matter what you have done or how badly you have messed up, this is a community where they won’t stone you?

What if what happened in Jesus’ day happened again here, and it just didn’t matter whether someone was homeless or a CEO, what color they were or how they dressed?

What if word started to spread all around … among atheists and AIDs patients and addicts and workaholics and divorced people and sexually-confused people, that there is a place where you just get loved?

Let me ask you a little more personal question. Who is God calling you to love? Where is God inviting you into the Scandal of Love? Just make it small. It is one of the reasons why Jesus said that his kind of love is characterized when it is extended to people who are difficult to love. Jesus said one time, If you just love people who are easy to love—people who will love you back—anybody does that.

Babies do that! Even the Mafia does that!

One of the most important things you need for Christmas if you want to grow spiritually is a difficult person in your life. How many of you have a difficult person in your life? You don’t have to point them out! And if you don’t, our church has a list and we can assign you one!!

I mention this because there’s a good chance that over the next few days, you are going to be sitting around a table somewhere celebrating the holiday and there’s going to be a difficult person sitting with you. And you can, if you want to, cross your arms and pick up a stone. A lot of people do. Sadly, a lot of churches have a lot of stone-throwers. You can pass judgment if you want to. You can say for whatever reason, “This person doesn’t measure up to my standards. They’re too odd, or too bad, or too off, or  too wrong or too loud or too something.”

You can do that, if you want. Or you can hear God’s invitation into the Scandal of Love, and remember the love that came your way, and then pass it along.

I love this quote from Ann LaMotte: You can safely assume you’ve made God over in your own image when it turns out he hates all the same people you do.

God’s about the Scandal of Love, and Jesus grew up embracing the Scandal, loving people that nobody else—let alone a Tsadiq—would love. And people looked at Jesus and said, “You think that you are a righteous man? You call yourself a Tsadiq? You’re a friend of sinners. You’re embracing people that no Tsadiq ever would.”

But Jesus came to teach about another kind of righteousness—a better kind of righteousness. You start to see so many parts of his life in a different light when you think about this story.

There was a time recorded in the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus was teaching, and he said, I tell you the truth. Unless your righteousness (your tsadiq-ness) exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. (Matthew 5:20)

And people wondered, “What’s that kind of righteousness that he is talking about?”

Jesus knew about that. His father was such a man. Anybody who wants to be can be a part of that righteousness, because God in a manger, in a stable, was starting a new kind of community…this new kind of tsadiq-ness, that is available to us, not because we work so hard to impress other people with how good and spiritual we are, but by faith as a gift that Jesus gives. It’s a “pass through” deal, given to anybody who kneels at the manger and says of Jesus what Joseph said: I’m with Him. I’m with Him. I cast my lot with Him. I tie my life to Him.

That’s the Scandal of Love.

Dr. Ortberg’s sermon on Joseph is my all-time favorite Christmas sermon! I go back and re-read it every year. These days I often wish I had a church where I could preach it again … giving Dr. Ortberg the credit, of course.

I hope you were blessed by it. And I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and that the New Year brings you closer to God. May he bless you with a renewed awe of His scandalous love. You are some of the most meaningful people in my life these days! –Greg