Putting on Christ | Whose Neighbor am I?

His hands and feet.

Kind of wish we would have done that song

in the beginning of this series.

It's such, it's right there.

I mean, that is where we're going,

that's where we've been,

and that's where we're gonna go today,

is the understanding that

if we call ourselves Christians,

little Christ, and people experience us,

the hope and prayer is that they experience Christ himself.

And that's a big ask.

That's an awkward ask that may make us real tense and tight,

that may freak us out,

that may make us feel like we don't wanna do it,

and all our, I think, realistic

understandings of what it means to be a Christian.

You know, you have a world that says,

oh, you're a Christian,

you think you're better than everybody.

Well, we've earned that a little bit in the church,

or a lot of it in the church over history,

that if you're not like us,

if you take things like the Crusades,

we thought that the way that we would

extend Christ's reign into the world

is to eliminate people that had other religions.

I think we look back and go,

that was a little bit of a black eye for the church,

and I think we could go throughout history,

where instead of inviting,

instead of sitting and seeing

those people that are different than us,

we go to say, let's just take them out

because we have God on our side.

Yikes, that is gross.

And that is a bad understanding, I think,

of what Jesus is wanting.

Now, some of you may hear that and go,

wow, so you're saying we should just be accepting

of all things, that's not what I said.

That you can see someone,

you can sit down across with someone,

and learn their lives and love on them,

and bring them to Jesus.

And I've always found it's better to do that

with a cup of coffee or a beer than a sword.

And as we've gone through that history,

we listen to that song as we're in this sermon series,

Whose Neighbor Am I?

I think that that begs the question,

and again, it's not about, ooh, my neighbors,

it's about who am I as a neighbor?

And so last week, you probably all saw it,

I wanted to go somewhere in the book of John,

but we just didn't have the time,

and because of that, we're gonna jump in

and do that today, knowing that there's probably

going to be a part two of this sermon series

at some point in the coming year,

or two or three, I don't think I'll wait.

I'm out five, I can't wait till year six to do it.

So we'll probably bump one before that.

And I'm not gonna tell you all when it's gonna be,

because one of the things I've heard from a number of you

is how much you love and hate this series.

I get it, I'm right there with you.

I love and I hate this series because of,

what Jesus is bringing seems so easy,

but I make a mess of it all the time.

And I make a mess of it because of my own thoughts,

my thoughts about other people, my desires,

those hidden grudges I hold, right,

that, ooh, I really want my pound of flesh

of that person or that situation,

and how what this sermon series, at least for me,

has brought, and I know a number of you,

is I think for some of us, it's time to let some

of that anger go, some of that hatefulness,

that hatred go, because it's actually keeping you

from loving your neighbor.

It's keeping you in some ways from loving God

in a way that God is meant to be loved.

For some of us, we love God with an agenda,

whether we know it or not.

God, I'm gonna follow you, I'm gonna trust in you,

as long as my business sees a bump in its balance sheet,

as long as my relationships love me back,

as long as I succeed in school,

as long as I have no problems in my life,

which is absolutely crazy, because Jesus actually

tells us the opposite, that if you're gonna be my followers,

you're gonna be hated on, you're going to be lied about,

you're gonna be persecuted, you're going to go through

the troubles of the world, in this world you will have

trouble, but take heart, what does Jesus say?

I have overcome the world.

But for some of us, like me, we want it in the here and now.

It's not meant for that.

And in the then, Jesus was all about opening people's eyes

in situations where they thought they were going to try

to catch Jesus, give Jesus an aha moment, or a gotcha moment,

and one that comes to mind.

A framework that I think we need to dissect this morning

is what Jesus did in the story of the woman caught

in the act of adultery, John 8.

So I'm gonna read it in its entirety,

and then we're gonna break it down, reading from John 8,

starting with verse one.

But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives early in the morning,

he came again to the temple.

All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman

who had been caught in the act of adultery,

and placing her in the midst, they said to him,

Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.

Now in the law of Moses, or in the law,

Moses commands us to stone such women.

What do you say?

This they said to test him, that they might have some charge

to bring against him.

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground,

and they continued to ask him.

He stood up and said to them,

let him who is without sin among you

be the first to throw a stone at her.

And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground,

but when they heard it, they went away one by one,

beginning with the older ones,

and Jesus was left alone with the woman.

Standing before him, Jesus stood up and said to her,

woman, where are they?

Has no one condemned you?

She said, no one, Lord.

And Jesus said, neither do I condemn you.

Go from now on, sin no more.

Go and from now on, sin no more.

It's an amazing testament to just who Jesus is

and how Jesus sees people in certain situations.

Because I guarantee all of us have been in situations

where we have not been seen.

Or if we've been seen, we've just been seen

for what we bring to the table in the negative,

or the sin, or the accusation,

or the issue that we bring to situations,

or just the issue that we find ourselves day in and day out.

And here, Jesus is doing a teaching

that goes radically beyond just the woman.

Because one of the things we have Jesus doing

is he is teaching those religious leaders something fierce.

Now notice, as John kind of recounts this story,

it's all people came to him.

So all people, he went to the Mount of Olives.

Early in the morning, he came again to the temple.

So he's in the temple, he's in the church.

Temple is usually in the square of the town,

center town, people are coming,

and Jesus is doing Jesus things.

Jesus is teaching, he is teaching.

And in the midst of this, the scribes and the Pharisees.

What Jesus is gonna do is he's going to put the law

on itself and say, Jesus' example of the law

is actually compassion, not death.

So that's what we're gonna look at, the law verse compassion.

Jesus' example here, okay?

We find Jesus teaching in the temple,

and I'm not gonna reread it just for the sake of time.

We find that Jesus teaching in the temple,

and the scribes and the Pharisees bring the woman.

So let's really Nancy Drew this thing.

So the scribes and the Pharisees,

you would think that they would be right there

to hear Jesus' teachings,

not because they wanted to hear from him,

but what did the Pharisees and the teachers of the law,

the Sadducees, all of them,

what did they want to do now when it came to Jesus?

What were they looking to do?

Trap him, right?

They were looking to trap him in his teaching.

They were wanting to call out the heresy,

because that would be the easiest thing,

because they uplifted their version

of the law of Moses of the Torah,

their version of it Jesus was raging against,

and they were just looking for a clear way

to say, gotcha, you're dead.

That's what they wanted.

Yet isn't it funny that they're not necessarily

there listening to him,

because they've got this whole plot,

they've got this whole sting set up,

and they're the ones that bring the Pharisees

and the Sadducees, or the teachers of the law.

Don't you think they could have just kind of

shed some money and say, hey, slave boy, or whatever,

go find this woman and bring them?

But they, in fact, kind of indict themselves in this

by bringing the woman caught in the act of adultery.

Here's the problem, right off the bat, right?

And I needed a felt board to teach me this,

but let's just say it takes two to tango.

Everyone understand what I'm saying there?

Yet only one is being brought out.

What in the junk is this?

That they are singling this woman out for whatever reason,

because we know that there's a verb here,

that there's an action going on,

that all of a sudden they're the ones

that are grabbing her, bringing her about,

probably not dressed to the nines, quite the opposite,

and they throw her in the midst

of all the people in front of Jesus.

That their law, that they held to so tightly,

they're now manipulating in front of the Son of God.

In some ways, and I had a Johannian scholar

I learned under Professor Borchardt,

that he told us at this point they're reeling.

They are compromising all of their integrity,

which they've already done,

but they are wanting to get this guy.

They are wanting to snuff him out,

because he is not only being a pain,

but he is also starting a revolution.

And what the Pharisees wanted was control over the peoples.

They knew they were never gonna have control over Rome,

but they wanted the control over the Israelites.

They wanted to bind the Israelites so tightly with the law

that one pinky out of bounds, boom,

they were gonna be done.

And whatever boom, whatever that meant

in the law that was broken.

Here was death by being stoned.

Stoning of one or two ways, right?

You either get rocks thrown at you,

or you get thrown to the rocks.

This one was the former.

But the absolute hypocrisy that the teachers of the law

are bringing is they want to center on just this individual,

just this woman, which to me is just such junk,

because if we actually see what is going on

and Jesus sees all of this,

they are compromising,

because the act of adultery is two people,

yet only one person.

They're manipulating the system to try to trap Jesus.

Sin doesn't play fair.

Sin never does.

If you're gonna say, okay, Satan,

I'm gonna sin this way,

but I only want it to hurt this much,

and I'm only gonna, no, that's crazy talk.

The whole idea of you give Satan an inch,

he takes a lot.

Or a foot, a lot works.

You know, but so you have this situation

where they're trying to manipulate sin in such a way

that they're going to try to trap Jesus.

So we're not even talking about anything neighborly here,

because the Pharisees and the Sadducees,

they didn't want neighbors.

They didn't want to love on people.

They did not want to show the love of Christ.

All they wanted to do is keep people condemned,

keep people judged, keep people under the shackles

that was the law of God.

So if my ins and outs of life,

if all you ever get from Munster Church

is the shackles of the Bible,

and that's what you should live under,

you're gonna be a pretty tense society,

because what you're going to try to live life

in such a way that you are bound by every jot and tittle

that the law in their interpretation kept you in.

But some natural questions come about.

Who's the guy?

How do they know this is going on?

Then they're the ones that go and bring them,

which if you actually look at some of the law,

they're breaking their own rules by touching her,

by bringing her about, by putting eyes on her.

There's so much hypocrisy here, it is not even funny.

And what Jesus is teaching, and what his response

is gonna be is so profound,

because the scribes and the Pharisees

were less concerned with justice

and more about trapping Jesus.

If he advocated for the stoning,

he would appear cruel and harsh.

They're wanting him to give an okay to kill her,

because what was Jesus teaching even right before this?

Love and compassion.

What have you been looking at for the last four weeks?

Compassion, love, walking alongside people.

This, they wanted Jesus to completely

undercut his own words, call him out as a hypocrite,

and just charge him, charge him, charge him.

And that's what I love, what Jesus does here.

I mean, they even question him.

This woman was caught in the law.

Moses commands us to stone such a woman.

So what Jesus is about to do,

Jesus is about to elevate himself above the law of Moses.

And friends, that's big, that's profound.

That is not nothing.

But if I'm Jesus, I'm going to verbally do this, right?

I'm gonna wanna verbally just wreck him.

But I think Jesus knows that there are more people

in this scene that need his grace and his mercies.

He knows the Pharisees do.

He knows that the woman does.

He knows that the guy probably does,

but we don't know about him.

But he also knows the people

that are gonna grab these stones, they need Jesus too.

And this is the all-encompassing teach

that Jesus is giving, the testimony of his love,

the profound measure of his mercy and his grace

is on display.

And his answer is profound.

His answer is profound.

He doesn't answer their question,

but instead he stoops down

and writes on the ground with his finger.

Now, this act of writing, there's a lot of debate.

You can Google this and you'll get a lot of sides.

Some suggest, and again, we don't know,

some suggest he's writing the sins of the Pharisees.

Some suggest that he is writing the amount of people

that tangoed with this individual, but we don't know.

But what he's doing is, so if this scene is happening,

and let's say it's all over here,

the woman's there, all the guys are around there,

and Jesus is right here, and he bends down

and starts writing with his finger.

Where are all the eyes?

All the eyes, again, everybody's there, he's teaching.

Let's just say there's 60 people in this situation,

and Jesus starts writing with his finger.

All 60 eyes are where?

On Jesus.

On Jesus.

Jesus is actually, in just that mere moment,

taking the shame off of the individual.

She, again, she's gonna be corrected, right?

There's still an issue here with her,

but there are issues abound in this situation,

and what he's doing, he's taking the view

off of her onto himself.

He is this great teacher, he has caused a lot of issues

for the Pharisees, and for the law, and for the temple,

and he stoops down, Katekipspion in the Greek,

and wrote, Egraphion in the Greek,

indicates a deliberate and thoughtful action.

I want us to stay there for a minute.

Jesus is not reacting in haste.

He is considering his response, and the hearts,

he, of those around him.

This shows us that Jesus is more interested

in addressing the heart condition of people

rather than adhering to the letter of the law

that the Pharisees are putting on him.

This does not mean that the law means nothing,

we've already covered that.

But if love God by love,

but if love God by loving people,

love God and love people,

is everything in here is hinged on that,

we got that a couple weeks ago,

then what he's putting this on is in action.

Because for some of us, we focus on the letter of the law

rather than the spirit behind it.

There are times we emphasize the rules and the regulations

over our relationships and the restoration

we're seeking in our lives.

As Colossians three says,

we are to put on compassionate hearts,

kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

And here's the rub, and this is going to sting.

There are some of us here, myself included,

that had a stone in our hand.

She did wrong, she deserves to burn.

She deserves this death.

And we are so blinded by the interpretation of that law

that we are under by the Pharisees, by the Sadducees,

by the temple, that we will miss an opportunity

to actually show what Jesus is telling us to show,

putting in fact who he is on,

and we'll get there in a second.

So Jesus, right, the Pharisees continue to press him

for an answer, and he finally responds.

Let's kind of invert this a minute.

For a lot of us, we know how the story ends,

and he has a conversation with her,

because I read it, so all of us should know.

What if he did that first?

What if he said, where are your condemners?

She looks around and goes, they're all right there,

because they haven't left yet, go and sin no more.

At that point, I think they're just gonna start

throwing rocks at both of them.

But what does he do?

He takes again the focus off the woman,

the focus will go back on her in a minute,

but the shame and the vulnerability of this woman,

he wants to in some ways honor,

he's not honoring the sin, but what he's doing

is he's in his teaching, in his correction,

because Jesus corrects in a very certain way,

he's putting it on the accusers first.

Let him who is without sin among you

be the first to throw a stone at her.

Again, this statement turns the situation on his head.

Jesus does not, hear this, he does not deny

the women's guilt, but he does challenge the crowd

to examine their own hearts and their own lives first.

He calls them to self-reflection and self-awareness,

reminding them that all have sinned

and all have fallen short of the glory of God.

But here's the rub, Munster Church,

here's the rub, Class of Celiana,

here's the rub, Ridge Road, northwest Indiana.

For a lot of us, we don't think our sin

is as bad as those other people's.

I have little sin in my life.

I don't stop at stop signs, haven't paid my taxes

in two years, and sometimes I use the Lord's name in vain.

This is a person caught in the act of adultery.

Adultery, I'll take non-taxes paid over that any day.

Who in the world do you think you are?

Who in the world do I think I am

that if someone's sin is bare, wide open on the table,

and I take this position and go,

yeah, I know I have sinned, but it's not as bad as hers.

No, because you're just doing a good job of hiding it.

Hers was exposed.

Here's the rub.

When we come to Christ, when Christ works in our hearts,

He's exposing our sin all day.

It's called conviction.

It's called sanctification.

It's called the process, the Holy Spirit training your eyes

and your mind and your heart not to sin

and how to deal with sin when it comes.

How many of us here today are sinners?

Every hand better get up, because it's on the interwebs.

And you're all still here.

Yeah, maybe someone threw a rock at you once,

but you're still here.

They wanted to put her to death, and Jesus said, time out.

If you're perfect, go right ahead.

You have every right to throw a stone at her,

because the law tells you that you do.

But what is Jesus saying?

I do not give you that permission,

because you all have sinned.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

So He's blowing this completely on His head,

and the result here is striking.

And I love how John puts this in there.

One by one, beginning with the oldest, the accusers leave,

convicted by their own conscience.

They realize that they are not without sin,

and they are no position to judge or condemn the woman.

This phrase, anima retetos in the Greek,

emphasizes a state of being free from sin,

not just in action, but in heart and mind also,

because I bet you had some people that were ready,

stone in hand, and they're like,

I've never committed adultery, fire away.

Jesus doesn't allow for that either.

You have unpaid parking tickets.

You're not allowed to throw the stones.

You covet the friend that you,

or you covet in your heart that your friend got to raise,

and you didn't, you can't throw a stone.

You have these secret relationships

that are only found in your apps.

You can't throw a stone.

You can't throw a stone.

You hold hatred in your heart

because of something that happened to you 20 years ago.

Friend, you can't throw a stone.

But here's, oh, and I may get emails about this one,

and I'll probably email myself

because I don't like what I'm about to say.

I have that reaction to what I'm about to say.

I want to throw a stone.

There are times in my life I want to annihilate that person.

That I want to expose that sin.

I want to write the anonymous letter.

I want to put it on blast on Instagram

or whatever you're gonna do.

I want to do all of those things.

That it is part of my joy in life to hate on that person.

To throw stones, whether they know it or not,

at them.

And some of us do it in such a cowardly way

that we just run by, throw a stone, and keep running.

And we love that about ourselves.

So friends, what are we saying?

We love that we get to judge sin that's not ours.

So what does that mean about being a neighbor?

If your neighbors know you as a judgmental stone thrower,

I don't think you're being a very good neighbor.

But they play music until 9.45.

And in your mind, I want to burn their house down.

That's not okay.

Like, oh, and they don't pick up after their dog.

Where can I get arsenic?

That's not okay.

And insert whatever you want here.

We go into insta-judgment just like the Pharisees.

Again, I'm not saying, Jesus isn't saying,

what she did is okay.

And we're gonna walk right there, right now.

But we have to, and I love what Haji Ami, the oldest.

I love what Haji Ami, the oldest.

Notice how it says, the oldest let's go first.

The youngest hold onto their stones

to the very last second.

Now whether, and here's, this is just the gospel

according to Jim, that I'm maybe one of the,

I'm almost 40, I'll put myself in the middle.

All right, I'm looking at the 60 and seven year olds

and go, they're dropping their stones.

Fools, they had their shot.

They're never gonna get this again.

And then it comes to me, it's like,

oh, but I'm not gonna be the first one to do it.

I'd rather the wise sages do it.

They're not doing it, okay.

Or you're the young guy.

Very new to the faith, maybe very new to leadership,

and you immediately wanna throw at the problem

instead of trying to solve it in a Christ-like way.

And you're the last, what if it said,

and the young ones dropped their stones first?

I think that reads very differently.

That the age, the banks of sin

that the older ones have, right?

If you're 80 years old to a 40 year old,

you just have older sins.

You probably have more.

Because you've lived longer in life.

You've sinned more.

We all know we are, you all rose your hand.

And if you didn't, you lied, you're a sinner,

you should raise your hand the next time.

But from the oldest to youngest,

they all let go of the stones.

They all let go of the stones, and they all leave.

Have you ever centered on that?

They don't stick around, they leave.

Because in my opinion, what they're doing is,

I don't have any right to stand here.

I am not perfect.

I need this Jesus just like she does.

And guess what happens?

Judgment and hatred turns into empathy.

Turns into genuine love of maybe I wanna clothe her.

Like how could we have done this?

Because some of them probably listened and said,

okay, at the right time, you're gonna pick up a stone

and you're gonna throw it.

The Pharisees may have orchestrated all of that.

We don't know.

It sounds like they did some kind of sting.

But notice how when we have differences of opinion,

even differences of faith,

and we wanna throw the hatred stone card,

what Jesus is bringing us is to a compassion

and to an empathy card.

And isn't it a lot easier to sit down for someone

with a cup of coffee who doesn't have a stone in their hand?

How awkward is that lunch?

That is, I get to know this person,

I have something cocked ready to go,

and if they don't say something that's good,

or they offer some kind of sin,

then I just get to chuck it at them.

Friends, that's not Christianity.

Because Christianity follows the way of Jesus,

and that's not Jesus.

But then what does Jesus do?

Jesus still calls for holiness.

After everyone leaves, Jesus addresses the woman directly.

Woman, where are they?

Has no one condemned you?

And I was in seminary in my John class,

when I really learned this for the first time.

Jesus invites her to speak.

She was standing trial.

That could have been the last day of her life.

And Jesus not only sees her, and not only engages,

but he asks her a question.

Has no one condemned you?

She responds, no one, Lord.

And Jesus says, neither do I condemn you.

And for some groups and some people,

they love to stop there.

You can't.

That's a bad read if you stop there.

Because Jesus is still about holiness.

But he's also not about people getting rocks thrown at him.

And people that throw rocks.

But he still calls for holiness.

Neither do I condemn you.

Go, and from now on, sin no more.

Jesus' response is filled with grace and truth.

He does not condemn her, but he also does not condone

what she does and what she did.

He offers her a new beginning,

a chance to change her life,

and to walk in a different direction.

The Greek word for condemn, kata koreno,

in the Greek means to pronounce judgment against.

Jesus is saying he does not pass judgment

on her in this moment.

However, his command to sin no more,

hominatara-tine, is in the present imperative,

indicating continuous action.

Jesus is not telling her to stop sinning in the instance,

but to live a life free of sin.

So what is he saying?

Daughter, this is not your life.

This is not how you find love.

This is not how you engage in life.

This is not the proper way to live as a believer.

And we like to have our own versions of that.

We struggle with that.

His command to sin no more is telling her to stop,

is telling her to stop sinning in this instant,

but also to live a life free from sin.

I guarantee you if I asked how many neighbors

do you have that you wanna have this interaction with,

all of you probably have two or three, if not a thousand.

And then I ask what part do you wanna play in the story?

And still some of us wanna have a stone in our hand,

or an egg, or a piece of toilet paper, or whatever.

Or if you're a monster, you can complain about people

on an app.

We wanna do that without looking at what we have going on

in our life first.

It's people that live lives like that,

that these tension-filled, judgment-filled,

everything you do is wrong because everything I do is right.

That is not the way of Jesus.

And we've done a good job of allowing that piety

in the church.

I have been in church all my life, so when I sin,

it's like gold-covered dog poop.

No one ever sees it.

No, it's still sin, and we can't use the excuse

that we've been brought up at church, yet still sin,

as a good thing because we know the right answer,

and we do the opposite anyway.

Friends, all of us would have been dead

if the law of Moses, the way the Pharisees kind of

lived that out, because that's manipulation and control.

That is us looking at people as objects,

not people with hearts, not people with lungs

that are full of air, not with opportunities

to share the gospel.

I guarantee you, a coffee and sharing the gospel

goes a lot better than a stone to the head

to then share the gospel.

So pastor, we've done this now for five weeks.

How do we do this?

Well, I had one to 17 of Colossians 3 put up,

but I wanna start with verse, nope,

I'm gonna do the whole thing quick.

If then you have been raised with Christ,

verse one of chapter three, seek the things

that are above where Christ is seated

at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on things above, not on the things of earth,

for you died and your life is hidden

with Christ in your heart.

You died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is your life, appears,

then you will appear with him in glory.

So what do we do?

Take off, put to death, what is earthly in you.

Sexual morality, impurity, passion, evil desires,

and covetness, which is idolatry.

On account of these, the wrath of God is coming.

In these too, you once walked when you were living in them,

now you must put them away, anger, wrath, malice,

slander, obscene talk from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another since you have put off

the old self with its practices and put on the new self,

which is being renewed in the knowledge

after the image of the creator.

Here, there is no Greek or Jew,

circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian,

Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all.

And right here, friends, I close with this.

Induyo.

What?

That's the Greek word for put on.

It's one of my favorite words in the Bible.

Induyo.

Marshall, do you pick out your own clothes?

Do you?

Okay, you do.

Julie, do you have to approve them?

You're not answering very quickly.

Okay, you do, okay.

But, so you put on your own, that beautiful shirt, right?

What Marshall did this morning, he Induyo'd that shirt.

He put on that shirt.

What Jesus, or what Paul is saying,

is what Jesus wants from Munster Church,

from Marshall, from Pastor Jim, to all of us,

is to put on every day,

to put on, like a shirt, like a jacket,

as God's chosen people, holy, beloved, compassionate hearts.

Kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, ouch,

bearing with one another.

And if one has a complaint against one another,

forgiving each other, ouch again.

As the Lord has forgiven you, you must also forgive.

All right, Jesus, I'm done with this.

Nope, he doubles down.

But above all, Induyo love,

which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,

in which you were called into one body, and be thankful.

And then he goes even more practical.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,

teaching and admonishing one another with wisdom.

Singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs

with thanksgiving to your hearts to God.

And whatever you do, in thought, word, or speech,

in thought, word, or deed,

do everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

giving thanks to God, the Father, through him.

I've seen businesses where that, just verse 17, is on there.

Yet they have bad business practices, they're unethical,

they lie to customers, and all of those things.

If you just wanna do 17 without doing 12 through 16,

you are doing it wrong.

That we, as a church, how, what kind of neighbors

do we wanna be?

We wanna be neighbors with compassionate hearts,

being sensitive to the needs and sufferings of others,

just as Jesus was sensitive to the woman caught

in the act of adultery.

Are we quick to feel compassion, or are we hardened

by self-righteousness and judgment?

If we wanna be good neighbors, we need to be kind.

Acts of kindness reflect the goodness of God.

They show a heart that is tender and caring,

not cold and indifferent.

When we show kindness, we embody the character of Christ.

If we wanna be a good neighbor,

we wanna be people with humility.

This is the lowliest of mind that esteems others

better than ourselves.

The Pharisees lacked humility, seeking to exalt themselves

by condemning the woman.

Are we willing to lower ourselves to lift others up?

Meekness is not a weakness, but a strength

under control.

It is the ability to be gentle and patient,

even when we are provoked and challenged.

Jesus demonstrated meekness when he responded

to the Pharisees' challenge without anger or malice.

Patience.

I said it, patience.

This involves a long-suffering attitude,

being willing to endure hardships or annoyances

without complaint.

Without complaint.

Being willing to endure hardship or annoyances

without complaint.

I felt compelled to just be annoying.

Are we patient with one another,

bearing with each other's faults and failures?

Forgiveness, as Paul states.

We are to forgive as the Lord has forgiven us.

This is not optional.

This is a command.

Are there people in our lives that we need to forgive,

releasing the debt they owe us,

just as God released our debt to him?

And friends, above all, put on love.

Love is a perfect bond of unity.

It is what holds all of the other virtues together.

Without love, our actions are meaningless.

So as we finish this journey, how can we,

as Munster Church, live out these virtues

in our daily lives?

It starts with a commitment to let the peace of Christ

rule in our hearts.

Being thankful for the grace that we have received

to extend that same grace to others.

It means choosing to forgive rather than hold grudges,

to show kindness rather than indifference,

and to pursue unity rather than division.

This is what it means to be a neighbor

in the kingdom of God.

Let's pray.