The text for this morning's message is found in Galatians Chapter 5

verses 13 to 15. For you are called to freedom brethren, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the

flesh, but through love be servants of one another, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as

yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed by one another.

One of the most jarring texts in the Bible that I know of is a sentence that goes like this

If I give away all I have and deliver my nothing. The reason it jars us is because Jesus said greater love has no man than this than that he lay down his life

for his friend.

And he taught us that one of the clear ways that you love your enemies and do good to those who

hate you and bless those who persecute you is by freely giving to those who ask without

any fretting about whether they're going to pay back or not.

And yet Paul says you can give away all you have and you can give your body to be burned and have it amount to a moral zero.

You can make the final sacrifice and be lost forever.

Which means, among other things, that the Christian right and the Christian left, right left, as they call us to activity in the political realm,

need to be exposed to a radical biblical critique. The right summons us to work

for the rights of the unborn,

a strong defense, nuclear superiority,

prayer in public schools, support for Israel, family values, balanced budgets, etc.

The Christian Left summons us to work for a more just distribution of the world's goods,

nuclear disarmament, the end of interventionist politics in El Salvador and Nicaragua, the ERA programs to combat

poverty and unemployment, and so on. The Christian right and the Christian left are summoning us to action and rightly so

because if there's one thing Jesus cannot be criticized for, it is indifference

to the needs around him in the world and the plight of people.

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