Heading into a Year of Jubilee for Our Church! Let Us Consider the Joy and the Possibilities...

The Promised Land was given to the chosen people by God.  Each family had their land.  The surveys and land grants make up the latter part of the book of Joshua.  These grants are forward looking.  In the bible of Jesus (our Old Testament), the ultimate promise of God’s work is prophesied in Micah 4:3-4:

“God shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their of fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the LORD of armies has spoken.”

In the Law of Moses, in Leviticus 25, this promise was remembered every fifty years.  Every fifty years was a year of Jubilee, a reset of God’s gift to God’s people.  Every fifty years, every family of God’s people returned to the land given them when God led the division of the Promised Land.  The law is even written that when someone ‘buys’ someone else’s place (agricultural land-cities had different rules), it is a proportional sale, for up to fifty years.  Because, in the Jubilee, faith trumps economics.

The gift of God to the people of God, the Land, was more important than the wealth a person might seek to accumulate in real estate.    

In other words, in the year of Jubilee, everything is restored.  It is a human version of God’s ultimate restoration of peace and perfection to God’s creation.  The case has been made (and I like it) that Jesus began His ministry in a year of Jubilee. 

Fast forward to here and now.  The Year of Jubilee is the year, for FPC Merchantville, of calling people home, back to their Lord and their family in Christ Jesus and their church.  It is a Year of Jubilee.  We are kicking off that Year with a Big Day.  

Sunday, November 16, 2025, leading into Christ the King Sunday and the Season of Advent, is the day we invite every member of this church family, every generation, to come breakfast and worship, to reacquaint and fellowship.  To begin a year of celebration and renewal.

Come and worship.  Come and see.  Join us for our Year of Jubilee.

Peace,

Pastor Pete

Loving Our Neighbors when They are Capital "S" Sinners, not simply generic, everyday and all-of-us Sinners...

Our passage for Sunday is Luke 19: 1-10,

19 He entered Jericho and was passing through it. ² A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. ³ He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. ⁴ So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. ⁵ When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” ⁶ So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. ⁷ All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” ⁸ Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” ⁹ Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

The “good folks” watching Jesus (like His every move?) are not happy with Him.  “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner”, they said.  Jesus went to the house of Zacchaeus, not simply a tax collector, but the chief tax collector in the Jericho district.  So, not just a sinner but a Chief sinner?

The story of Zacchaeus is well known, especially if you were raised with the Sunday School song, “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he…he climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see…”  We spoke Jesus' part, “Zacchaeus, come down…for we’re going to your house today…”

 It is a marvelous story of redemption, a new life in Christ Jesus; turning from a life of collaborating with the Romans and making restitution to the community.  But the watchers call him “sinner”.

In the New Testament, there are ‘s'inners’ and there are ‘S'inners’.  Zacchaeus is definitely Capital ‘S’.  Little ‘s’ sinners are everyone, as per Paul, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  It is a blessed reminder that Jesus has died for us all.  But then there is the ‘S’inner, Capital S.  Within the caste system of the time of Jesus, “Sinners” were the outcasts.

Outcasts were identified in last week's Scripture.  In Jesus’ parable, the self-righteous Pharisee prayed us a list of-who he is NOT-‘outcast’ Sinners; thieves, rogues, adulterers, and tax collectors.  The Sinners can be publicly identified, shamed, shunned, and cast out of polite society.  They are 'those people' who 'law (of Moses) abiding' folks will not cavort with.   

 The beauty of this system is that these Sinners, while still technically ‘neighbors’ who we have to love…because Jesus said so…can be under-loved…disliked…and pushed to the margins because of what they have done.  Have you heard the expression ‘love the sinner but hate the sin’?  Make it a Capital 'S' Sin and its permission to push them out.  Not in my spiritual neighborhood.  

 Jesus embraced the collaborator, the outcast, the Sinner, the tax collector.  Grace first, forgiveness first, love first.  Today, is this where we need 'all our strength' to love our neighbor?  Especially today's 'S'inners?  Love first, without screening or filtering 'in Jesus name.'  Want a look at Jesus' 'filtering system' for sin?  Check out his commentary on murder and adultery in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:21-32), see how that might apply to 'S'inners.  We are all ‘S’inners.  

We all need Jesus.  We who have Him are called to love our neighbors.  No filter, no screening, no casting out, just loving our neighbor, serving them with all our strength. 

Peace,

Pastor Pete

 

Loving My Neighbor...Okay Jesus...But Do I Have To Like Them Too?

Our passage for Sunday is Luke 18: 9-14,

9 He (Jesus) also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

This Sunday, we continue our sermon series on loving God and loving Neighbor with soul, mind, and strength.  We explore the cross-pollination of loving neighbor with all our mind.  We spoke of the mind already, in relation to loving God, which we call ‘prayer’.  In the work that I do, as a minister, looking to our neighbors, reaching out (my mind) from a place of believe (my soul), this work is generally referred to as ‘pastoral care’.  Being the ‘pastor’, we add that qualifier.  But while I might have specific training and focus, when it comes to our minds, to what we think and what we say, in terms of loving our neighbors, I believe we all come from a place of caring.

Jesus, in our passage today, tells us a parable of two men who went to the temple to pray.  One is very easy to care for.  There is need and there is brutal honesty as he prays desperately to heaven.  Even though he is a tax collector, a collaborator with the Roman overlords of the time, he is in need.  We can deal with all the stuff in regards to being a tax collector at another time.  Right now, he hurts, he's come to the Lord, and we are the Lord’s people who might come to a place like this to respond, to provide caring.

And then there is the other guy.

He’s a Pharisee.  And what a tagline he has, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.”  What Jesus calls a man exalting himself is what might better be known as arrogance.  There are a lot of people in life like that.  Neighbors…yes, everyone is.  Someone to be loved…Jesus says so…  Likeable?  Well…maybe not…  Are these people in need?  Yah, but they don’t usually know it.

If we were to be brutally honest and open with the Lord as we seek to love God with all our mind, can you imagine praying, “Lord, you want me to love this one??”

To love our neighbor does not mean we are welcome mats to be walked all over.  God is love, and that is the measure we are called to follow.  But nobody ever walked over God, not as our Father in the Old Testament, not as Jesus in the New.  In fact, God- as Father and as Son-provides many practical examples of how we could express care even for the self-exultant. 

So we have some fun things to talk about.

 

Peace,

Pastor Peter