As rich in meaning as this whole passage about love is in the First Letter of John, it is his last observation about love upon which I want us to concentrate for the remainder of this sermon. “There is no fear in love,” John wrote, “but perfect love cast out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.”

We human beings like to tell ourselves that we are cerebrally and ethically the loftiest species in the earthly created order. That is a highly debatable point, but it might be correct. Most ordinary people can accomplish things that even the brainiest of animals cannot do. Morally we can make good choices that even the kindest and most loving dogs or cats or horses could never even conceptualize. Nevertheless, we have all read how pets rescued their owners from burning houses or kept them from drowning, and so on and so on. However, almost always when heroic rescues are accomplished, it is human beings, not animals, who accomplish them.

The word providence, or more specifically the doctrine of providence, is not referred to much these days. It was a very important concept to St. Augustine, the greatest of the Early Church fathers, and to St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the medieval Church scholars. It became a much-discussed and written-about topic for Martin Luther and John Calvin. Since the Reformation, however, providence as a major Christian concept has slipped from the consciousness of most Christian scholars, clergy, or lay people.

I am convinced that faith comes much more easily to some people than to others, and it is primarily because of cerebral wiring or brain chemistry or who knows what. The thesis of this sermon is not based on any empirical scientific study or evidence. Rather it based on having known a few thousand individual people as a minister, several hundred of them quite closely. And I mean to suggest as clearly as I can that, for instance, just as various human bodies vary greatly in athletic prowess, and for essentially genetic reasons, so too do various human minds vary in their ability to affirm matters of faith.

Without question, there has been a long and strong tradition of communion in the Christian Church for all of its history. It originated, of course, from the widely remembered Last Supper of Jesus with his twelve disciples on the night before Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem. I have chosen two biblical passages which describe the Last Supper. The passage from Mark’s Gospel, ch. 14- vs. 17-25, is considerably the shortest account of the upper room episode in all of the four Gospels. It is all Mark says about the Passover meal.

At the very beginning of this sermon, I want to assure you it will not be about what you might think it will be about. I preached on that subject a few weeks ago, and I’m not going to preach on it now. You can’t relax, exactly, because what I am going to talk about will not be very cheerful, but at least it won’t be that, so you can rest somewhat easily.

Why is Smith always sick, but Jones never is? Why does one family go sailing through life with favorable winds and never a storm, while another family has one stormy crisis after another? Why are Connecticut and New Jersey relatively so affluent, and South Carolina and Mississippi relatively so un-affluent? Why are rich countries so rich, and most of the countries of Africa and Asia are so poor? Why are the western states ablaze with so many fires, and the Southeast, Northeast, and Midwest are currently free from serious natural disasters? It is those kinds of questions we think about when we think about the fairness of God.

From the outset, you need to understand that this sermon is going to be largely educational, and not inspirational. If there is any inspiration at all, it will come toward the end of the sermon. This morning I shall be much more of a rabbi, a teacher, than a pastor or preacher. Having forewarned you, however, I hope you will listen attentively anyway. It can’t hurt you, and it might even deepen your understanding of what the Bible is - - - and isn’t.

Jesus and many of his followers believed that the apocalypse was just around the corner. God was going to end the world, and all the righteous would go to heaven to be with God, and all the unrighteous would be destroyed on the earth. That didn’t happen. Nonetheless there was much tribulation ahead for those who were the first followers of Jesus. Within forty years of Jesus’ death, the Romans, not God, destroyed the kingdom of Judea and scattered most of the Jews to the four winds. At the same time some of the Roman emperors began to persecute the Christians in Judea, Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome. When the fourth Gospel was written, tribulation was widely experienced everywhere in the world where there were Christians and Jews. Jesus could not have spoken about that at the Last Supper, because the disciples could not understand what Jesus would have been saying. But tribulation came nonetheless, and the writer, who believed that Jesus was God, believed that God, by means of Jesus, would overcome the tribulation.

Throughout the Bible, there are numerous instances where God is reported to have chosen certain individuals or certain peoples for His own purposes. Almost always in those instances, God doesn’t give His reasons for doing what He does. He just does it. For example, God seemed to favor Abel over Cain, because God was more pleased with Abel’s offering than Cain’s. Cain was a shepherd, and he brought a sheep to God as a burnt offering. Abel was a farmer, and he brought some grain to God as a burnt offering. So does God prefer farmers to shepherds? In other words, does God like agriculture better than “agniculture”: the growth of grain more than the growth of sheep? Genesis 4 offers no explanation for God’s choice; it just states it.

“He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” If God restores our soul, it means that it needed to be restored. “I once was lost, but now am found/ Was blind, but now I see.” We delude ourselves into supposing that we are doing just fine in life, thank you very much. But at times we are not doing fine, not fine at all. At times we become lost, and we need to be restored to the flock by our Shepherd. To imagine we are making it on our own is to fall into one of the most lethal of life’s traps. Great pride goeth before great pratfalls.

There about sixty different people who come to The Chapel at least once every two months. Here is what I am suggesting that each of you can do to keep us a vital, if also inevitably an older, congregation. Invite three people of your acquaintance to join you for one Sunday here. When you invite them, explain to them why you attend The Chapel. Then, either bring them with you, or meet them here. Don’t bring all three at once, unless they are all related to one another. Invite each one separately in order to make it a special occasion for them, and for you. If they come back the next Sunday, we shall shout hallelujah and rejoice, although only figuratively, of course. People such as we do not visibly and vocally shout hallelujah or rejoice, for heaven’s sake. But you’re only asked to get them here once, not twice or more. And remember: Of people who attend a new church for the first time, the highest percentage come because someone invited them – not because of the building or the programs or the preacher or other such things, though those are factors, but because someone invited them to attend.

The prophet’s heart is broken by the sins of his people. His mind is thrown into deep depression by their willful violation of the laws of God. He feels duty-bound to tell his friends and neighbors about their misdeeds, and he knows it will make him a community persona non grata. However, because he is undeviatingly committed to speaking on behalf of God, he goes on saying what he believes he must say, knowing that it will be met by increasing resistance. Nevertheless Hosea was sure it must be said.

The prophets have never had an official place in either the Jewish or the Christian religions. Almost never in history was a prophet ordained to become a priest or bishop, an elected denominational president or chief executive. Prophets usually speak out against the religious establishment, not for it. It is the vocation, the divine calling, of prophets to condemn rather than to congratulate. That’s why they are never welcomed into the inner circles of any religion. They are agitators, not assimilators, irritating provocateurs, not irenic proclaimers.

The prophecy of Hosea is the first of twelve biblical books which are collectively known as the Minor Prophets. The word “minor” in this context does not mean they are less important than the Major Prophets, but rather that each of these books is shorter in length than Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel. They are the five books of the Major Prophets.

When Jesus came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey at the beginning of Holy Week, he came in peace. Symbolically, the animal he rode, a donkey, signified that. No sane person would go anywhere on a donkey, wanting to make it appear that he fiercely intended to wage war. On that long-ago day, many in the crowd who welcomed Jesus apparently believed he was the Messiah. The twelve disciples may also have believed it. By the time Jesus was born, however, most Jews expected the Messiah to be a warrior. So as far as most of his contemporaries were concerned, Jesus could not possibly be the Messiah.

It is no easy assignment to become a follower of Jesus Christ. As the 20th century German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” “Take up your cross and follow me,” said Jesus. It was not an insignificant or offhand observation. He who knew his own cross was soon coming challenged us to take up our own crosses in our quest to enter fully into God’s kingdom.

For Americans living in the early years of the 21st century, the third Beatitude is very difficult to understand, let alone to emulate. Meekness, as ordinarily understood, is not an admired American attribute. If anything, it is a personal quality most of us have been taught never to attempt to adopt. Americans think of themselves as being tough, tough-minded, and not easy to intimidate. Meekness is not an ordinarily admired virtue for Americans.

Grieving or mourning is a very real and very painful emotion for most human beings. The most serious mourning is usually the result of the death of someone who held a unique place in our lives: a spouse, a parent, a child, a close friend, even a public figure we did not know personally, but whom we greatly admired. For example, some older people are not yet over the deaths of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, even though both died over fifty years ago.

Before we consider the first of the eight Beatitudes, we need to ponder for a few moments the context in which Jesus made these statements. They are the opening words of what the Church has always called “The Sermon on the Mount.” For three complete chapters, from Matthew 5 through Matthew 7, at least according to the person who wrote this particular Gospel, Jesus made some extraordinary observations about numerous subjects. Many scholars believe that Matthew probably put this collection of sayings together to help us remember them better. The fact is that Luke also has many of these exact sayings, but he does not string them together in just one place as Matthew does. Mark also has a few of these teachings scattered here and there throughout his Gospel.