You better get right with God … With your Neighbour ….. With yourself 

With the creation and all other things 

Prayer: CALLING THE HOLY SPIRIT 

We are in awe of your magnificent power displayed through the entire universe, for through you all things were made and all things have their being. We come before you with grateful thanks and with hearts that long to adore you and worship only you.

Lord, may we know the presence of the Holy Spirit here with us today. May we be open to your leading, sensitive to you speaking and alert to your calling. Father, we invite the same power that was at work when Jesus was raised from the grave to be present with us here now. Lord, we declare that you are welcome here amongst us. 

Amen.

REFLECTIVE STORY

I was at the maddens morgue (the funeral home), and the mortician, a very funny guy, was busy making jokes with the corpse saying to them ” I kept you up straight yesterday, why are you now lying on the ground, or you went out yesterday?”.

Lol, the joke was funny but the cold inside that room withheld those smiles.

The room was calm and quiet, without problems, with plenty of brains but without thoughts of tomorrow.

He said to me “Brother Lucas look at this one right here (pointing at a man) if only money can buy life he won’t have been here today, he slept, and never saw the next day, this one here (pointing at another) was the only child of his mother, that lady over there was most favored wife to Mr. Brown, that guy there was preparing to leave for studies abroad, just like our problems these people had different plans for their future and tomorrow but tomorrow isn’t promised, none of them knew they will be here today …….if death hasn’t happened to you Brother Lucas you will call someone’s corpse a log of wood “

Those words went far and it got me thinking, those people in that room had enemies and friends, owe people, and people owed them.

They all had their plans for tomorrow but God had other plans for them.

A man tells his wife see you when I’m back from work and in the evening the knock on the door, policemen with the sad news of an obituary.

No family name or class matters after here, no religion matter after here.

We keep fighting others, destroying the happiness of people, and owing people without knowing that tomorrow will be like those people whose gallons were used to support them.

One day you will get your last kiss, last flowers, wave your last goodbye you may not know it will be the last, so as far as we live treat every day like it’s the last day.

FIX UP YOURSELF and stop going on as if you are better than others, fix your relationship with God for a day will come you will have to meet him face to face. 

Romans 12:9-21 ………….

This reading is very clear. It reminds us that “Life can change in a single moment. This is not just the stuff of movies and fairy tales. Your life really can change in an instant, for better or for worse.”

The only safety we have not to be caught unaware of is to love. Love covers a multitude of sins. God is love and where there is love there will never be sin.

Love is the overarching paradigm for the whole passage. Paul echoes Jesus in calling attention to love as the key moral norm for God’s people. Jesus had said that all the law and the prophets hang on two commands: love God and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40). Paul echoes something similar in Romans 13:8-10. Here in 12:9, Paul assumes that his audience knows that they are to love; he urges them to make their love for each other genuine.

Now Paul gives examples of how to cling to the good (verses 10-13). He uses the word agape for love in v.9, but becomes more specific by using phileo in verse 10 to refer to the family love of those living in a community. The images are powerful: let your love be heartfelt; be eager to show each other honor; be set on fire by the Spirit; be devoted to prayer; contribute to — literally “participate in” — the needs of the saints, and pursue hospitality. To “participate in” others’ needs is to give of yourself and your own resources for their material needs, like food, clothing, and shelter. True love is fervent, relentless, and practical.

Stop bad mind – when others are moving on with life-stop badmind,                                          when your neighbor moving on with life – stop bad-mind. 

Paul addresses how to love those outside the Christian community, by living in such a way that fosters peace. Verses 17 and 21 act like bookends, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil … Do not be overcome by evil.” These ideas are connected: we ourselves are overcome by evil when we let spite infect and spread through us like a disease.

Leggo the jackrow- be real like a bird stop pretending you are one with others yet you are fleshing them off with your bad habits.

For us to understand how to love God. How to love ourselves. How to love our neighbors and how to love nature. We have to learn to fix up ourselves. 

My friends make amends, fix your relationship with God,

Fix your relationship with yourself,

Fix your relationship with your neighbor,

Fix your relationship with nature. 

In the Gospel of today, we hear about Jesus and the Samaritan woman. She was cast out. This was why she came over to catch water in the middle of the day when the sun was blazing hot. She hides from the community that would have torn her down for her weirdness. But when she met and encounter Jesus her life was transformed. 

It is during this encounter between the two we hear Jesus ask for water.  For the first time, Jesus begged for water. The second and the last time we hear Jesus asking for water was on the cross where He said, “I thirst”. Today we are also invited to thirst, not for pipe water but the living water.  

Like the woman from the well we all thirst for things that cannot satisfy. We go on to places that can never give us pleasure and we forget to quench the thrust of fixing up ourselves and come clean with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with nature. 

God is ever thirsting for each one of us, for your faith, for your love, for your little attention…..

There are three thirsts that satisfy Jesus and while we look to fix up ourselves we can also be satisfied. 

Fix up yourself and 

1. Thirst for worship
2. Thirst for sinners 
3. Thirst for an encounter 

Thirst Worship

In John 4 Jesus reminds us, those who worship will worship in Spirit and truth. This lent takes it as a challenge to encourage someone to return to the heart of worship. We all have obligation to encourage other to come to Church. We prepare our family for school and to travel, but never prepare them to go and worship. 

Thirst for Sinners 

Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman. A woman who was considered a sinner and despise but yet Jesus approached and spoke to her. 

As you come to worship be sure you will meet wicked people inna the church. But that is not the time to stop coming to church because the church is a hospital for sinners. It is a place to fix up yourself. 

Pray for sinners, encourage sinners, and love sinners but do not fall into their sins. 

Your home, your church has to be a place sinners can come. Just as God thurst for us sinners so should we.

Thirst for an encounter.

There are miracles in the encounter. In every encounter, there is a grace of God that nourishes. 

Do not stop anybody to encounter.  

Do not lose a chance to encounter Jesus in others.