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"Here as in Heaven."
For more information visit : garden.church
Welcome to Garden Church podcast. We're in a series called Walk with Jesus. This series is about learning to cultivate a passionate love with God. Joy.
Bill Dogterom:You ever feel like coming to garden is like the biggest game of musical chairs you've ever played? It's like when the music starts, am I gonna stops? Am I gonna have a place to sit? It's good to be with you and, especially, today, been wrestling with how do we pray in the light of who we have become as a nation. One of the most horrific stories in the old testament is the last 2 or 3 chapters of the book of Judges, where a horror occurs unlike anybody in Israel had ever heard of before.
Bill Dogterom:And of course, the truth is, it's only new to people who haven't been paying attention. So how do we pray? How do we how do we pray for those who, having heard the news yesterday, have felt just a little bit of a spark of excitement? Had a solution to what they viewed as an intractable problem. Or for those who read into the moment more than what it was, who mindlessly repost memes and rumors generated from who knows where, without concern as to where they came from.
Bill Dogterom:How do we pray? How do we think about who can we be in this time? And and and and candidly, I think it's probably worthwhile reminding us that we are the people of God. That means something. We are the people of God before we are elephants or donkeys.
Bill Dogterom:We're the people of God, before whatever is printed on our passport or our green card indicates that we are. We're the people of God. And that has to inform how we do everything else. And if it doesn't, we're playing for the wrong team, no matter the outcome. And so, the mark of the people of God, Jesus told us this from the get go, remember?
Bill Dogterom:Blessed are the peacemakers. They're the ones who will be called the children of God. The people who stretch out one hand to one side and the other hand to the other side and hang suspended in the, on the cross. In the attempt to absorb the fearful anger of both sides without retaliation, like Jesus. And so I'd like to pray.
Bill Dogterom:Lord, we need some help with this, not because we don't know what to do, but a, because sometimes we just don't wanna do it. We wanna start piling on with everybody else. Or, because it's gonna hurt to do what you've asked us to do. And, I just ask for the infilling of the holy spirit, Not for the moments of ecstasy and worship, but for the moments of just brute presence in the middle of people's pain and anger and anguish that we would not add fuel to fire? Yes.
Bill Dogterom:That we would not be pot stirrers, even in Jesus' name. Yes. That we instead will be, oil over troubled waters. That we will be people of peace in very in our real presence, that we will be a non anxious presence. And whenever we ourselves are feeling anxious, oh Lord, that we will look at you in the middle of the storm.
Bill Dogterom:And if you're still sleeping, not concerned about the storm, I pray that you would teach us what you know so that we can sleep in the storm too with complete confidence. And if even if even if all goes wrong, whatever that might mean, you are with us, and more importantly, we are with you. And so help us, I pray, in an age in which weaponization of ideas is becoming the language of the day. Help us, I pray, to be your people, to be peacemakers. In all of our relationships, we ask this in Jesus, who taught us how to do it.
Bill Dogterom:Amen. Amen. Amen. We have been, in the last several weeks, in a conversation about how to learn how to do stuff the way Jesus did. How do we how do we worship like Jesus?
Bill Dogterom:How do we pray like Jesus? How are how can we be committed to the community of faith like Jesus was to the church? And, they all kinda point to, or maybe more specifically generate from what I'd like to talk about, this week and next. Today, I wanna talk about how to love like Jesus. And next week, I wanna talk about how to die like Jesus.
Bill Dogterom:So you might wanna give that one a bye. They're obviously related. Yeah? And and it's important for us to know that they are related, kinda part a, part b. But I I have said this a number of times, and I I I am kinda stuck in the rhythm of it, that Jesus didn't die so that we wouldn't have to, but so that we would know how to.
Bill Dogterom:The implication being that he invites us to follow him wherever he's going. And so, it is that, how do we how do we do that, that I want to kinda work on? And of course, the place begins by learning to love like Jesus, because that's the only thing that makes the dying like Jesus make sense. Right. Yeah.
Bill Dogterom:And as it turns out, Jesus, hours before his death, within 12 hours of the passage that we'll look at, he's he's gonna be hanging on a cross. What is he most worried about? What is he most concerned about? What's kind of on the front of his mind as that corner gets turned? And as it turns out, it is this, He's worried about us, if you will.
Bill Dogterom:I'm using that word in a popular sense. He's worried that the whole mission will hit the rocks before it even leaves harbor, because we will not have learned how to love one another. Over and over and over again, in that upper room discourse, so called, John 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. He says it over and over and over again. I want you to love one another.
Bill Dogterom:It all comes down to this. Tattoo this on the inside of your eyelids. Love one another. And and and and why is this so important? Well, just look around the room.
Bill Dogterom:No, seriously, just look around the room. Now, look around the room that he spoke this to in the first place. On the way into dinner, we had been fighting about which of us was the greatest. You remember that conversation? Maybe you weren't participant, but you overheard it and wondered why you weren't in consideration.
Bill Dogterom:Now we don't think that way, but I I he's been with them for 3, three and a half years, and he's gonna hand off the mission to save the world to these doofuses. Anybody feel the tension that he must have felt is like, what are you what are you what are you doing? Sure you couldn't get you prayed, and this is what you ended up with? This 12 are who you ended up with? Come on.
Bill Dogterom:Why do you think that's important? Because if these guys can do it, bro, you can do it too. If these guys have got it figured out, you know, if if if they're invited to be world changers, not by standing on pedestal, but by bending the knee and washing feet. You can do that, and that's the problem, right? We want to be pedestal standers.
Bill Dogterom:In the meantime, we are following someone who, just before he spoke these words, had not assumed the role of a servant, but continued in being their servant. This wasn't a performance art for Jesus. It was who he was, and it annoyed the heck out of him out of those guys. Peter. No.
Bill Dogterom:No. No. No. No. Because Peter's not stupid.
Bill Dogterom:He knows where this sucker's going. If I let you wash my feet and you're my rabbi, that means I gotta wash these other gee. No, no, no, no. And Jesus is clear. You're right.
Bill Dogterom:You call me Lord and Master. Good on you. Ticked the box of orthodoxy. Now, can we talk about what that actually means? I want you to serve one another.
Bill Dogterom:I want you to wash one another's feet. Don't don't memorialize this. Don't post this on your Instagram. Put it into practice. Put it into practice.
Bill Dogterom:I wanna see some dust on your knees, having bowed before a brother or sister, including one who might betray you, including one who will deny you, including those who never did get you, them too. So here's what he says, John chapter 13 verses 34 and 35, and you can hear the little bit of a twinge of sarcasm in his voice. A new commandment, I give you, he says. Love one another. As I have loved you, you've gotta love one another.
Bill Dogterom:This is how people are gonna know that you're my disciples, that you've been with me, if you love one another. So here's his strategy to save the world. Jesus is counting on love as the only force adequate to right the wrongs, to bring the kingdom that is upside down, right side up. He is counting on love as the single most powerful force in the universe to align the universe back towards home. And he invites his disciples, following his example of washing their feet, to join him in this conspiracy of love, this challenge to love one another as he loved them.
Bill Dogterom:And this is, remember, these 12, some of them had some natural affinities. They were brothers, siblings, right? Two sets, at least. But we have Matthew, who is a tax collector, a sworn collaborator with the Roman government, and Simon and Judas, both of whom have taken the blood oath to kill collaborators with the Roman government. You think Jesus wasn't strategic in his choice of these losers?
Bill Dogterom:Like he was in his choice of you? Because of what you bring to the party? Really? Really. Really.
Bill Dogterom:Why does he do this? Because he wants to model to us and to everybody else. And unfortunately, we get big of ourselves on it, don't we? Which of us is the greatest? Jesus, you can be first.
Bill Dogterom:You go, Jesus. But after that Well, a new commandment I give you. You didn't get it the first 83 times. Let's see if we can land the plane this time. Love one another.
Bill Dogterom:Why? Because this is how people are gonna know that you've been with me. Please please notice what he's saying here. Not that you believe the right things about me. You can tick tick the box of orthodoxy all you want, but if it doesn't translate it into how you treat one another, let alone how you treat a broken world that is fearful, how are people gonna know that you're my disciples?
Bill Dogterom:Because you believe the right stuff. You really think you're gonna get that far in the conversation? Really? So he invites them to love one another as a primary way of testimony. His whole mission is compromised if they if we don't get it.
Bill Dogterom:It's a strategy. It's the way of pushing back against the Genesis 4, am I my brother's keeper? Yes, you are. By the way, anybody else bothered by Genesis chapter 4? Cain kills his brother And the ground calls out for revenge.
Bill Dogterom:And what does God do? He doesn't kill Cain. He has mercy on one who is caught red handed. Oh, man. I hate that story.
Bill Dogterom:Because that has implications, doesn't it? I mean, I don't get to be vengeful? I don't? No. That's why I want you to learn, he says, how to love your enemies.
Bill Dogterom:You don't get to have any of them. Other otherwise other oh, and by the way, that was you. 10 minutes ago, that was you. While we were still His enemies, Christ died for us. So what is he inviting us into is this same imitation, acting in love as a primary mission representative, as a way of imaging, representing him.
Bill Dogterom:You can see how he's restoring our Genesis 1 identity to function as his representative in the world. Jesus, how in the world are we gonna do this? Well, he says, I'm glad you asked. Here's how I did it. John chapter 15 verse 9.
Bill Dogterom:As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now, remain in my love. Here's how. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my father's commands and remain in his love. I've told you this, so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be made complete.
Bill Dogterom:So when he invites us, commands us to love one another, he's inviting us to jump into a flowing river of love that generates in the heart of the Father. For him, first, and through him, for us, and through us, for all of those others whom Jesus, whom God, whom now we love. So he is he is indicating to what and and and I'm bordering on a little bit of heresy here, so bear bear bear with me, but Jesus learned how to love by being loved. He allowed the if I can use this without being totally misunderstood, and if you are gonna destroy the tape. He let himself be loved by God.
Bill Dogterom:Soaking into the cracks and crevices of abandonment, of disappointment, of no as an answer to prayer. He let himself be so loved by God, not just in the moments of ecstasy, but in the moments of absolute betrayal, abandonment, and disappointment. He let himself be loved by God, and that is how he then learns to, if I can use that language carefully, love us too. Why? Because that's how we're gonna learn to be loved.
Bill Dogterom:Some of you are being loved right now in the moments of spiritual boredom. It's like worship just didn't kick it for me today. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe maybe maybe it's just off.
Bill Dogterom:Maybe I need to find another church. Maybe I need to maybe I need to no, no, no, no, you just need to be bored in Jesus name. You gotta let him love you through your self obsession with entertainment to the place of encounter on the other side. Some of you have Some of us, I'll say us, because this is me today, have to lift your disappointment as worship. You have to list lift your your no when you would have heard a yes as your worship.
Bill Dogterom:Why? Because if you can't be loved at the depths, you won't be helpful to people who need to be loved at the depths. Do do you see what he say? I want you to love one another as I have loved you. How did he love us?
Bill Dogterom:He gave his life up for us. Oh, dear me, that might hurt. That'll leave a mark. But how could he do that? Because he knew that his value worth significance did not depend on him.
Bill Dogterom:It depended on being in the flow of God's love, the same as yours does. That's right. Same as yours does. Does does that make sense? So so he invites us to to to to live this way.
Bill Dogterom:He invites us to remain in his love by keeping his commandments by the way, anybody unclear on what his command is? Don't you just hate it when he puts the cookies on the bottom shelf for us? And we're just looking for great revelation. What's god's will for my life? Well, let's start here.
Bill Dogterom:The rest of it will follow. Yeah. It really will. No, seriously. The rest of it will follow, because if he learns that he can trust you to love one another, man, what else might he trust you with?
Bill Dogterom:Come on. You know? So he invites us into this and and and invites us to to to align with his love, which is aligned with the Father's love, to get in the flow, if you will, of the love of the Father being loved, and this is hard. Being loved is really, really hard. It entails risk, and and and Jesus is very aware of this.
Bill Dogterom:It entailed risk for him. And and so he's he's very aware, which is why he says, look, I've told you this so that my joy might be in you. You're gonna need it. Not happiness, joy. Joy is the capacity for what is, the sense of pervasive well-being, the sense that it'll it'll be okay.
Bill Dogterom:It'll be okay. And and and and you're gonna need that. Joy joy is not some passive reactive happiness. Joy is is launch velocity for love. And Hebrews joy enabled Jesus to endure the cross.
Bill Dogterom:So joy is what is required. Capacity given by Jesus is required. That's why he says, I want to give you my joy so that yours is full. You're gonna need every ounce of joy, because it's it's fast burning fuel. And it is the capacity then to love as he's commanded us to.
Bill Dogterom:And by the way, he says, verse 12, same chapter, this is my command. Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, to lay down their life for their friends, and you're my friends, if you do what I command you. I no longer call you servants, because a servant doesn't know what his master's business is. Instead, I've called you friends, because I've told you everything that I learned from my father.
Bill Dogterom:And this is my command. Love one another. This is a challenging text, because it sounds like in the English construction, that he's making, this this identification attached to obedience. What is what is after here, I think, is that our obedience is the result of our being loved. Right?
Bill Dogterom:And and and as we step into obedience, as we step into the practice of Jesus, we discover the capacity of Jesus. We discover, oh, there's an inner logic to this that that we we couldn't have known before we started. Do you know? We couldn't have known before we started, because because we we want so much to understand as a condition for obedience. And Jesus says, you're never gonna get me that way.
Bill Dogterom:I need you to just just do what I tell you to do for now. It'll make sense afterwards. Right? Because you step in in obedience and you love one another, and guess what? Then you discover, oh, wait.
Bill Dogterom:I'm part I'm part of the enterprise. I've taken out shares in the company. I'm part of the answer now to the brokenness of this world. I'm a carrier of love. And and to be honest, to be honest, this is the hard part.
Bill Dogterom:To be honest, there are some people that I have to be commanded to love, otherwise, I will not. And this this is this is why he's not counting on our feelings to to to to support this. The feelings are good lagging indicators, but unless they're well trained, they're gonna end you're you're gonna be driving in with your eye eye in the rear view mirror and you're gonna end up in the ditch. So he says, don't don't worry about your feelings. Just do what I tell you to do.
Bill Dogterom:Wish and work good for people, all people, including those that you previously have regarded as your enemies, which you no longer get to have. This is this is the only way. This is the only way that at the end of the day, you you can become part of the solution and not a continuing part of the problem. So I want you to I want you to be marked as my friends by your by your obedience that has become the best and most intelligent thing you can do. It's no longer obedience.
Bill Dogterom:It's the outflow of my life. You'll learn this. If you've been married for 10 or 15 minutes, you know that you can't count on your feelings to generate correct action. You can't. And so he invites us into that behavior.
Bill Dogterom:This is why it's important for Jesus is the way. The way. Follow me, the way, before he's the truth. We've talked about this before. We want so much for Jesus to be the truth.
Bill Dogterom:He is. He is. But you don't get the truth of Jesus until you follow in the way of Jesus. Otherwise, you'll beat people up with the truth of Jesus. And you you you really think if you beat them over the head with truth, there's gonna be a way made for love?
Bill Dogterom:Really? That's not his strategy. It wasn't with you. Yeah. And it's not ours with others either, Particularly, with those with whom we disagree.
Bill Dogterom:Particularly, with those that we know we're actually right. This is why he says here, look, greater love has nobody than this, that'll lay down their lives for their friends. That's gonna leave a mark. You you now, for him, it was literal. Within 12 hours, he will be doing this.
Bill Dogterom:Yeah? For most of us, we will wish sometimes that it were literal because sometimes there are some people that it's easier to die for than live with. Yeah. It's just like, take a bullet for you, but, you know? And and Jesus knows this.
Bill Dogterom:He knows this. He knows this. He knows this. So so so for example, with with Peter, his his friend, remember? He he follow me.
Bill Dogterom:Do you love me? Follow me. When you were young, you you used to dress yourself, you used to go where you wanted to go, but when you're old, somebody else is gonna decide where you go and what you wear. He said this, quote, to signify by what kind of death Peter would glorify God. What kind of death will Peter glorify God with?
Bill Dogterom:By letting somebody else decide where he goes and somebody else decide what he wears. That's called submission. It's called surrender. It's called alignment in love. It means even if I'm right, I don't need to assert my own way.
Bill Dogterom:I can be so solid in my belovedness, my identity, as anchored in the father, I can risk going with you, even if I think you're wrong. I don't need to be right. And when, if as I believe will be the case, my rightness is demonstrated by reality and you bang your head against it, you will not hear I told you so from me. Isn't Jesus annoying? It's like, come on.
Bill Dogterom:What do you expect of us? This is what he expects of us. This is what he expects of us. Why? Because this is how you learn the father.
Bill Dogterom:This is what eternal life is. Eternal life isn't some zip code transaction. Eternal life is to know the father. Yes. And the father, God is love.
Bill Dogterom:So he invites us into this obedience that transfers into loving alignment, because we know what he's up to. We've got a sense of the strategy. We learn to love by loving. We stretch it out. We aren't waiting for our feelings to support.
Bill Dogterom:We're gonna act in it, even if we get it wrong. Even if and we will. We will just get it wrong, and and and this is why love doesn't depend on being received. This is the hard part, because it's possible to be deeply, truly, passionately loved by God, king and creator of the universe, and not receive a bit of it. He will not this is the this is the annoying thing about love.
Bill Dogterom:It won't force itself on you. You can keep saying no and he will honor your no. That's why I I happen to believe that there is a hell. Has to be a tiny little place, somewhere in the universe where people who will not allow god to love them can pretend that they're all alone. There are people who are living there now.
Bill Dogterom:And your task, my task, is to crack open that hard shell of self protective fear, by just soaking it in relentless love, whether it works or not. We love not for outcomes, but because we're lovers, like God has loved us. Yeah? So he invites us to align ourselves to this and Jesus continues on here in John chapter 17. He says, thinking of us sitting in the room, my prayer is not just for these 12, but I I pray for those who will believe in me through their message, That all of them may be 1, father, just as you are in me and I am in you.
Bill Dogterom:May they also be in us so that the world may know and believe that you have sent me. I've given them the glory you gave me, that they may be 1 as we are 1. I in them, you in me, that they may be brought to complete unity and then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. So in this hyper divisive time that we live in, how is the world going to know that Jesus can be relied on and counted on? Because there's a community of people who have been shaped by proximity to him, that bear witness in their relationships to one another, that love actually works.
Bill Dogterom:Yeah. That we can disagree with each other about all kinds of things, but at the center, there's a place at the table beside me for you. Yes. And this is the strategy that he invites us to, that the world may know. How are we doing, brothers and sisters?
Bill Dogterom:Is the world looking in on the church saying, I want some of that. Look at they love one another. Or have we forfeited the single strategy that has proven effective in the face of the divisiveness of our culture? So Jesus is right to be concerned about this, to pray this. Please notice we are the only ones who could deny Jesus the answer to his prayer.
Bill Dogterom:God the father is all over it. The enemy, and we do have 1, he has no power against the prayer of Jesus, but we do. We can say no and sadly do. And this then gives us he says, this is the medium of revelation. This is how God is seen.
Bill Dogterom:That's what glory is. It's the medium by which God is seen and invites us then to be traffickers in glory by the ways that we love one another. John got a hold of this and, when he writes to his friends in Ephesus, says, 1st John chapter 3 verse 23, this is his command, to believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded. Notice the connection. Not just to believe things about Jesus, not even really just to believe in Jesus as important as that is, but to actually believe Jesus, to take his word seriously and begin to put it into And this is this And this is this is what John is saying.
Bill Dogterom:This is this is what being a Christian means. We are marked by the things that mark Jesus, not first correct belief about Jesus, but behavior that is shaped by alignment with Jesus. Like I said before, he is the way first before he's the truth. We follow in the way of Jesus on the way to the knowing of the truth of Jesus. Truth doesn't lead, it doesn't make a way for itself.
Bill Dogterom:1st John chapter 4, dear friends, verse 11, since God loved us, we also ought to love one another. Nobody's seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us. His love is made complete in us. We get to love one another as the purest revelation of God in our world. And as the means by which that love grows and is perfected, brought to completion.
Bill Dogterom:We need to get really, really good at loving. When? And who? It's hard to love, not easy to love. Jesus told us that this is where it's going, and he invites us to stretch out and to build capacity by practice in our love for one another.
Bill Dogterom:So what does that look like? There's all kinds of ways of framing it. But Paul says this, look, the love that you're after shows up this way. It's patient. It's kind, not envious, never boastful, not ego driven, not proud, Never dehumanizes or dishonors another person.
Bill Dogterom:Not even on x. Never. Doesn't seek its own advantage. Isn't easily outraged. Never keeps score, It's not pleased when evil prevails, but chases after what is true.
Bill Dogterom:It protects It trusts It hopes and it never fails. Let's pray. Oh lord, as we sit with this text and the implicit invitation, the explicit invitation to take you seriously here, we recognize that there is a risk entailed in being loved, in loving, but it is much less the risk of not being loved and not loving. So, Lord, we're wanna just create a bit of space here. We sit here on a Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, And invite you, Holy Spirit, to search our hearts.
Bill Dogterom:Where are the cracks and crevices that love from above needs to seep into? The places of abandonment and alienation and bitterness and cultured cultivated resentment that justifies our resistances. Oh, love that will not let us go. Please soak that knot into surrender. For those, oh Lord, who sit here in this sanctuary this morning, just almost angry at the simplicity and the complexity of it.
Bill Dogterom:I pray that we would let it be true enough, at least, to begin to try. There'll be opportunities this afternoon, this week to do this. Treat the person on the other side of the counter who got our order wrong with kindness and generosity rather than disdain and contempt. To treat our loved ones, those with whom we live, roommates and spouses and children and parents, friends, family, that we have gotten into the rut of dismissal with in one form or another. And we need some help, Lord, to to back the wagon up, to take the right road rather than to get it stuck in the ditch.
Bill Dogterom:There may have been very good reasons for our disdain, but they will never never resolve in any other way, but through the love that forgives, surrenders. So I just pray for courage, oh, lord. We just sit in the stillness for a moment. Just come, holy spirit. Search our hearts.
Intro/Outro:Thanks for listening. For more information, please visit garden dot church.