Homiletics Contributions

The January 31, 2016 entry in the lectionary preaching resource Homiletics Magazine has some references that I submitted. They asked me to study their material and offer my reflections. It led to some interactions with the editor, Timothy Merrill. The following are the references they chose to include. Some of you who know of my interest in writing will also know what this means to me.

In the present time, faith, hope and love sustain the church, but the greatest is love. It is possible that it is greatest because it is lasting. Love is an ethic that will abide into the future, but one we can practice in the present as well. Love takes up the believer into the act of the nature and operation of God and participates in the movement of the love for the world. For this reason, Paul could call love the greatest among the gifts of the Spirit, for it not only mediates but also already constitutes the relationship with God.

--Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 184.

Thanks to Rev. George Plasterer (Cross-Wind United Methodist Church, Logansport, Indiana), for sharing this with Homiletics.

One of my favorite books is by Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving. He speaks of our use of the phrases "falling in love" and "being in love." Both imply that nothing could be easier or more natural than love.

Yet, when we look at the way we express love in real life, there's hardly anything we human beings do that can begin with such a hope and expectation, and yet so often fails so regularly, as love. We have this deep-seated craving for love. Yet, we act as if almost everything else is more important than love. Success, prestige, money, power -- we use almost all of our energy to achieve these aims.

--Rev. George Plasterer, Cross-Wind United Methodist Church, Logansport, Indiana.

M. Scott Peck, in The Road Less Traveled, writes that self-discipline is love translated into action. If we love one another, we will obviously order our behavior in such a way as to contribute the most to the spiritual growth of one another. Then he writes: "The more I love, the longer I love, the larger I become. Genuine love is self-replenishing. The more I nurture the spiritual growth of others, the more my own spiritual growth is nurtured. I never do something for somebody else but that I do it for myself. And as I grow through love, so grows my joy."

--Thanks again to Rev. George Plasterer (Cross-Wind United Methodist Church, Logansport, Indiana), for sharing this with Homiletics.