God forgives those who need it.

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
March 30, 2025
4 Lent, C
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Psalm 32
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Context matters. With Scripture, as with anything context matters for determining the meaning of something. Taking bits of scripture out of context, we can get scripture to say all sorts of things. For example:

“God loves nothing,” rather, “God hates.” If I had a hankering to make up an angry, frightening story with scripture, taking words out of context, I might just say that. “God loves nothing. God hates.” See, context really does matter, because those words really are in scripture. Deuteronomy 16:22 really has the words, “God hates” right there together, but the verse is actually at the end of descriptions of idolatry and injustice, “things that the Lord your God hates.” That’s what scripture says; God hates things like idolatry and injustice. Context matters. 

Here's another one. “God loves nothing.” Ooh, way harsh, “God loves nothing,” and yes, you can pluck those words right out of scripture, from Wisdom 7:28, but here’s what it actually says, “God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.” Again, context matters.

I bring this up because today we have a passage about God’s forgiveness. In the story Jesus tells, a young man basically tells his dad, “I wish you were dead, now give me my inheritance.” When the young man spends all of his money and ends up penniless, he goes home, begging his father’s forgiveness, and his father runs out to him, embracing him, and throwing a party because he came back. From that story, God’s forgiveness seems pretty vast and unending. 

Last week, however, I heard in a Bible study someone say that if you are a Christian and you turn away from Jesus, you can’t be forgiven of that. There’s no way to come back to Jesus if you have ever turned away. 

That is not our belief in the church. If you turn away from Jesus, yes, you can come back. That’s the whole idea of repentance. That’s what Jesus was showing us in the story he told. So, where have we gotten this idea that you can’t come back to Jesus if you are a Christian who has rejected Jesus? Well, this idea comes from scripture, but it comes from scripture without context.

See, in Hebrews 6:4-6, the writer says, “it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, since on their own they are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt.” Well, that seems pretty clear. If you believe in Jesus, and then you stop believing in Jesus, you cannot return to a belief in Jesus, and you cannot be forgiven. 

What about the context, though? 

The writer of Hebrews is writing to a whole church, a large group of Jewish Christians, and it seems as though this church is beginning to lose their faith in Jesus, wanting to continue in their Jewish faith apart from Jesus. The writer is trying to convince them that Jesus really is the way to go, and he writes about Jesus in a very Jewish way. He compares Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross to the Jewish animal sacrifices on the altar. He talks about Jesus’ priesthood in the context of the Jewish priesthood. Additionally, he writes about turning away from Jesus in the context of the people of Israel turning away from God throughout the scriptures. 

Remember, he writes, how Israel would forsake God and God would forsake them until the next generation would return to God? So, he’s writing to them about Jesus in the same way, and yeah, he’s threatening them a little, but that threat is written to them for the purpose of keeping them from turning away from Jesus. The writer of Hebrews’ words aren’t a forever truth to Christians that if you believe in Jesus and then stop believing in Jesus, you can never be forgiven. 

Such a belief, that God can’t or won’t forgive you for turning away from Jesus, is in conflict with other parts of scripture, like James 5:19-20. “My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” James states very clearly that if you turn away from Jesus, you can turn back. 

The thought that you can’t be forgiven if you turn away from Jesus is also in conflict with the overall narrative of Scripture. The story of scripture is of God creating us, loving us, and constantly reaching out to us to heal us and guide us back to him. Grace, and love, repentance, and forgiveness are the themes of Scripture. 

Maybe that’s why Jesus taught about God’s forgiveness, over and over again. Jesus taught about God’s forgiveness in the story he told of the young man wanted his father dead, took and wasted his inheritance, and then came back penniless and filthy, begging for his father’s forgiveness. His father forgave him instantly, and then his older brother complained.

“He doesn’t deserve it,” the brother complained. “He turned away from you, while I’ve been here with you the whole time; he should never be forgiven.” When we start saying that folks can’t repent if they turn away from Jesus, we start sounding like the older brother in the story, complaining how unfair it is, that forgiveness should only be for those who deserve it.

Well, that definitely sounds like people claiming forgiveness for themselves, while also saying others are beyond God’s forgiveness. The religious leaders in Jesus’ day seemed to be claiming the same thing when they got upset with Jesus for hanging out with sinners. “Those are the wrong sorts of people. God doesn’t like them!” They seemed to think. So, Jesus told the story of forgiveness. 

God forgives, whether we want others to be forgiven or not. God forgives not just those who deserve it. God forgives those who need it. We all need the healing of forgiveness. So, God calls us to repent, because we need that too. 

How often do we hear repentance expressed as a threat, as if the point of repentance is to appease God’s anger. “Yeah, it’s time to repent. I gotta get God off my back again.” Such thoughts forget that the purpose of repentance is our healing and wholeness. We repent because we need it for our healing. Turn away from things that are causing harm. After all, we only repent of things that are harmful to ourselves and others. 

So, whatever else you’ve heard about repentance, whatever rules you’ve heard about God’s forgiveness, try setting aside those rules made by bits of scripture taken out of context, and remember instead the story Jesus told. A young man said, “Dad, I wish you were dead, because I want my inheritance now. Gimme my money. The dad did, and the kid left, only to return filthy and penniless, begging forgiveness, and his father ran to him, blessing him and forgiving him. 

God forgives. Over and over again. God forgives us. Whatever it is, however, many times it is, God keeps inviting us to repent, to turn away from ways that are causing harm and return to God’s will and God’s ways. Jesus invites all to return and receive God’s forgiveness, not just those who deserve it, but those who need it. 

Unflinching Self-Honesty and a Life Well-Lived

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
March 23, 2025
3 Lent, C
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Psalm 27
Luke 13:31-35

So, the Roman governor, Pilate, had some Israelites killed, and then he took some of their blood and mixed it in with the sacrifices Rome was making to their gods. He turned people into human sacrifices, so not only was their death unjust and tragic, but then Pilate turned their death into a total affront to all the people of Israel. 

So, the questions would have come. Is God protecting us or not? Are we still God’s beloved, or were those people just really, really awful that God let that happen to them? That must be it.

So, Jesus asked them, “Do you really think they were worse than everyone else?” 

“Well, yeah,” the people thought.

“No guys, not so much,” Jesus responded. “We’re all liable to the same judgment, by God, not by Rome, and tragic death, like that, can happen to any of us at any time.” A terrible and corrupt governor in Rome decided to kill those Israelites, not God, and those 18 who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them, that was due to unfortunate engineering and less than ideal construction, not God deciding to kill them with a tower.

People die, all the time: sometimes after a long and beautiful life, peacefully dying in their beds; sometimes suddenly, violently, through horrible tragedy. That’s just the way it is.

This isn’t really a surprise to us. We know this. We see it all the time. As much as we may sometimes like to think or wish that the wicked die terribly while the good are blissfully eased into peaceful and expected death, we know this isn’t the case. Whether it’s Rabbi Kusher’s book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Schusterman’s book, Why God Why?, or Rabbi Joel’s song, Only the Good Die Young, we seem to understand that tragic and early death can happen to anyone at any time. We seem to understand that the amount and quality of one’s sinfulness does not determine the amount of one’s suffering or violence and suddenness of one’s death. 

We know this, and yet, we often have thoughts and questions just like the Israelites did, who asked Jesus about the people Pilate killed. Sometimes we’re trying to justify ourselves a little bit and make ourselves feel safer. Maybe they were bad, or we wonder if they had done something wrong. We certainly hear preachers often talk about this, though usually directed at folks with political differences, religious differences, or even folks with the wrong brand of Christianity. That self-justification is bad enough. Perhaps even worse is when we can’t find anything objectionable in those who died, so we try to defend and justify God. “God needed a new angel.” More than that little kid needed his mom, are you kidding me?

Well, whether we’re claiming that those people were bad or that God was particularly in need of a new winged harpist that day, all of our justifications for tragic death are a basic fear response. We’re trying to make sense of the world, and we’re trying to make safe our own place within it.

“Yeah, that’s missing the point, guys,” Jesus says. Rather than trying to fool yourselves into thinking that the world makes sense and is always good, right and just; rather than try to fool yourselves into imagining your place in the world is safe from harm, realize that yes, indeed, tragedy can happen to anyone at any time. So instead of fretting your life away with false platitudes to boost your serotonin levels, accept life as it is, with all of its sometimes scary randomness.

Then, repent, and repent again, and then, for good measure, repent again, and after that, go ahead and have breakfast and keep going with your day, repenting continually as you go. That’s what Jesus told the people in response to their question about whether only the wicked died tragically. Stop worrying about that, y’all, and instead, “repent and return to the Lord.”

Now, I don’t believe this was a fearful, frightening message that you better repent or else, despite what we may have heard from popular Christian preachers. Jesus was not threatening the people to be good enough or repent well enough that no harm would come to them. Jesus’ call to repentance is not meant as a talisman against harm. 

Rather, Jesus’ call to repentance is a call continually to align our lives with the life and love of God. Doing so may not save us from the crazy whims of a despotic ruler, and being good enough won’t magically keep a poorly built structure from falling on us. What repentance does, what continually aligning our lives with the life and love of God does is allow us to truly live, a life of wholeness, a life of fruitfulness. Like the fruit on the fig tree Jesus talked about, like the fruit of the Spirit, repentance brings about love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Those are the fruits we are seeking to grow in our lives. If our lives are long, ending peacefully in bed, we seek to grow the fruit of the Spirit, and if our lives are cut short, even violently, tragically, we still seek to grow the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. A life full of those fruits sounds like a life well-lived, whether long or short, a life well-lived. 

So, Jesus calls us to repentance, calls us to a life well-lived.

Repentance means looking deeply, being unflinchingly honest with ourselves, and seeing what defects of character, what ways we follow are bringing harm to ourselves or harm to others. Overindulgence, harshness, falsehood, malice, cruelty, frenzy, anger, resentment, hatred. We don’t eat these fruits in order to bring harm to the world. We eat these fruits because we are hurting and they make us feel better, at least for a little while. Anger, resentment and hatred make us feel strong. Overindulgence, harshness, and falsehood help us feel safe. Malice, cruelty, and frenzy make us feel in control.

So, we eat these fruits, and they destroy the fruit of the Spirit within us. Our overindulgence, harshness, falsehood, malice, cruelty, frenzy, anger, resentment, hatred: these things continually leach out of us into the lives of everyone around us. These negative fruits grow within us because of the ways we live which feed these fruits, these toxins, and so Jesus calls us to repent. 

Repent of the actions and ways in our lives that feed these toxins and cause them to leach out from us into the lives of others. What are those ways that feed these negative fruits? Of what do we each need to repent? Well, answering those questions is why we pray and look deeply into our lives with unflinching honesty. Then, we make a decision to turn from these harmful ways with God’s help. Our trust comes in believing that God actually does have something greater for us than our negative fruits bring. 

So, we are called to repent, over and over again, continually turning toward the ways of love, and hope, and faith. Repent of the ways that feed our anxiety and angst. Repent of the ways that feed our selfish overindulgence. Repent of the ways that fill our hearts with anger and resentment. Then, let God grow within us the fruit of the Spirit. 

With that fruit, we can be at peace, even amidst fear, even though death may come at any time. We seek the fruit of the Spirit. We turn to Jesus. We align our lives with his way of life and love, and we walk with him in a life well-lived.

Do not be afraid, for the Word has become flesh...

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
December 29, 2024
1 Christmas, C
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 147
John 1:1-18 

“[Mary] gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.”

When Jesus was born, the Word of God became human. The Word of God which spoke creation into existence became human. The word of God which gave the law of Israel became human. The Word of God which spoke through the prophets became human, and most importantly of all, the Word of God which is God became human.

When God became human, an angel of the Lord went to nearby shepherds and told them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

That little baby, wrapped in bands of cloth, surrounded by family and no small amount of animals was God born among us as the human child, Jesus. The good news of great joy is that God became human and was born among us, as one of us, uniting all that we are in perfect union with God.

That’s good news of great joy, and yet we so often hear it told as remarkably bad news, don’t we. “If you don’t believe in Jesus, God’s gonna get you,” right? We do talk a lot about God’s judgement of the wicked, the unjust, and those who gain wealth by oppressing others. Thank God, God has judgement on such people.

Here’s the good news: even that judgement and that wickedness has been united to God in Jesus. That’s the whole point of the incarnation, of the Word of God becoming human; everything about us has been united to God. Nothing can separate us from God and God’s love. Amidst all the storms and crud of life all around us, we are perfectly united to God: in our faith, in our fears, in our kindness and in our sins. We are forever one with God through that baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.

Now, I said earlier that Jesus, in the manger, was surrounded family as well as all the animals. I don’t just mean Mary and Joseph. As much as I love our manger scenes with more cows and sheep than people, as in a barn set away from the house, that was almost certainly not the case. The room where they were was attached to and part of the house where animals could be kept. They were probably at the home of a family member. So, Jesus was surrounded by Mary, Joseph, and other family members celebrating the birth of Mary’s firstborn son, and they were surrounded by animals.

Thinking of this manger scene of family and animals, I was reminded of Noah’s ark. The Manger, the birth of Jesus, was like a little ark, a little sanctuary amidst the flood of all the crazy that was going on around them. Rome was oppressing the Jewish people, there were fanatical religious leaders calling for armed rebellion, tax collectors and soldiers were extorting money from people, and as it turned out, the king of Israel was a crazy enough dude that he thought murdering babies was a good idea.

So yeah, life was like a terrible flood of crazy all around and in the midst of that flood, you had this ark, this manger in which God was born among us surrounded by loved ones and animals, a safe place from the storm, and a new beginning.

On that night, in that manger ark, our new life of perfect union with God began, and with that new life, God began once again God’s life of love among us. Remember that revolution of repentance I talked about last Sunday, Mary, singing her song of praise to God and of revolution on the earth? Remember, I said that God’s revolution for us is meant to change the crazy of the status quo not by violent revolution, but by the non-violent revolution of repentance? The next step is the non-violent revolution of love.

The Word of God became human because our union with God is what gives us the strength to love in the face of all of the crazy going on around us.

The strength to love in the face of oppression, the strength to love in the face of assault, the strength to love even in the face of murder and rape. That is the revolution of love that God gave us on that night when Jesus was born. We saw Jesus live out that revolution of love all the way through his death and into life everlasting beyond death.

We still see Jesus’ revolution of love being lived out among us in our world today. I think of the time after South African after apartheid. There was terrible violence and oppression during apartheid, and there was violence done in ending apartheid. Faced with this boiling rage among the people of South Africa, Nelson Mandella set up the Peace and Reconciliation Commission, and he asked Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu to lead the commission.

The commission offered amnesty for people involved in apartheid and in the violence done against apartheid. The commission sought truth from those who had harmed so many through their oppression and violence, and victims got to hear from those who had harmed them. The victims got to know that the perpetrators understood what they had done and see the humanity of their victims.

The work done through the Peace and Reconciliation Commission wasn’t perfect, and not everyone agreed with the work, but the work overall brought peace and reconciliation to a nation on the verge of collapse through conflict. Jesus’ revolution of love paved the way for the people of South Africa to move beyond the hurts of the past and find some peace amidst the hurt and hatred, amidst storms of the crazy of life.

Archbishop Tutu wrote:

To forgive is…a process that does not exclude hatred and anger. These emotions are all part of being human. You should never hate yourself for hating others who do terrible things: the depth of your love is shown by the extent of your anger.

However, when I talk of forgiveness I mean the belief that you can come out the other side a better person. A better person than the one being consumed by anger and hatred. Remaining in that state locks you in a state of victimhood, making you almost dependent on the perpetrator.

If you can find it in yourself to forgive, then you are no longer chained to the perpetrator.

Freedom and salvation. Freedom from sin, including freedom from the sins of others. That is the salvation of Jesus and Jesus’ revolution of love. Gathering with Mary and Joseph, with family, and with animals around the manger and the babe wrapped in bands of cloth, we can rest in that ark of freedom and salvation amidst the storms of life around us. The Word of God has become human, uniting us perfectly with God. All of our faith, all of our fears, all of our kindness, and all of our sins have been united to God. So, “Do not be afraid, for we have been brought good news of great joy for all the people: to us is born…in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord,” for the Word has become flesh and dwells among us.

When we know forgiveness, we know salvation.

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
December 8, 2024
2 Advent, C
Philippians 1:3-11
Canticle 16
Luke 3:1-6

Have you ever felt guilty about something you did? Ever felt bad about hurting someone, even if they didn’t know it, you lied or cheated, and betrayed someone’s trust or love? Have you then ever been forgiven by the one you’ve harmed for the things you’ve done?

If so, then you know the immense release that comes with forgiveness. The healing that goes on inside of us when we are forgiven, and our guilt recedes, and a weight is lifted because the one we have harmed has restored us to being ok. We’re no longer wracked with guilt. We’re no longer separated from one another. We’ve been restored to the possibility of love between one another. That is salvation.

The problem we see that needs fixing, from the Eden onward, is our disconnection from God and disconnection from one another. As we hurt one another, we pull away from one another, we put up barriers and shields to keep us safe. We walk around with anger in our hearts, showing others that we’re tougher than are so they won’t hurt us. We walk around with fear in our hearts pulling away from others before they have a chance to hurt us.

We see one another as threats, knowing that we’re often right, that others are threats, but mostly because they see us as threats.

We compete with one another out of scarcity for money, jobs, food, shelter. Since we feel we can’t trust others, we tend to go for winner take all, the American Dream of being billionaires while others work for them without enough to pay rent. Even further disconnection.

In our disconnection and mistrust, we turn to drugs, sex, alcohol, and anything else we can in order to feel better or not to feel at all. Those things don’t help, but they disconnect us even further. Angry, afraid, disconnected lives, seeing others as enemies to be feared or conquered…does that sound to anyone like Hell on Earth? That's because it is.

Disconnection is the Hell on Earth we know all too well. Salvation, then, is reconnection, reconnection with God and reconnection with one another.

John the Baptist went out into the wilderness proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and we are told that John did this so that people would know salvation through forgiveness of their sins.

Forgiveness brings us reconnection, and reconnection is salvation from the Hell on Earth that we so often live. When we are restored to one another through repentance and forgiveness, we’re no longer separated from one another, and we are restored to the possibility of love between one another. That is salvation.

When we know forgiveness, we know salvation. 

So, as followers of Jesus, our way of life is the way of forgiveness. Ideally, we follow the way of forgiveness because we actually know the healing and salvation that forgiveness bring. Some folks maybe don’t.

Some folks might say, “no,” to the question, have they ever felt guilty about something they did. Some may be too afraid to face it or admit it. Some are so self-absorbed that they fail to recognize the harm they’ve caused, and some may even be so self-important that they wouldn’t even care much about the harm they’ve done to others even if they did recognize it.

In any case, for folks who refuse to feel guilt or who won’t or are just too unaware to feel guilt, it may be hard to really understand the salvation given by God. Perhaps that’s why John’s baptism wasn’t just a baptism of forgiveness, but a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

With repentance, we first have to understand the harm we’ve done, actually care about those we’ve harmed. Then, we repent. We change our ways. We seek to make amends and bring healing where we can to those we’ve hurt. Repentance and then forgiveness of sins. That brings about healing and restoration. Repentance and forgiveness together are our way of life, the way of healing and love.

Unfortunately, it often feels like we’ve largely divorced repentance and God’s forgiveness from this life and made it all about avoiding punishment after this life. Then we’ve further made rules out of Jesus forgiveness. Don’t feel guilty about anything you’ve done in this life? No problem. Just believe in Jesus, and he’ll forgive you. Don’t believe in Jesus, but you seek to bring about healing through repentance and forgiveness? Well, too bad, since you don’t believe in Jesus, God is going to punish you anyway.

Here's the deal with Jesus and God’s forgiveness. Yes, God forgives us. Yes, we are given forgiveness through Jesus. Yes, we are assured of punishment for the wicked, and at the same time, yes, we get to rest secure in God’s love for us and God’s forgiveness of us. How do we fit God’s punishment of the wicked together with God’s forgiveness and love? We fit God’s punishment and God’s forgiveness and love together with trust and faith.

We trust in God’s punishment, because sometimes, when we don’t realize or don’t care about the people we’ve harmed, we need God’s punishment to give us a kick in the tail, and we need God’s forgiveness and love because that is where healing and reconnection happens. When we truly feel the weight of how we’ve harmed others, and we repent and seek amendment, we feel the release and healing of forgiveness, we have salvation here on earth.

God will one day restore all things, restoring this world so that there will be no more Hell on Earth; there will be no more of us harming one another and disconnecting from one another. One day we will all be restored, God will wipe away every tear from every eye, and we will live fully in the peace and love of restoration with God and one another.

In the mean time, God’s forgiveness and love gets to be lived. We get to live the gift of forgiveness choosing and working to release anger and hurt, to release the debt that is owed, and let forgiveness rule in our hearts. As we do, we know salvation.

Following God as Healing and Love (not a less scary alternative to torture)

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets
April 14, 2024
3 Easter, Year B
Acts 3:12-19
Psalm 4
Luke 24:36b-48

Peter was pretty forthright with the folks to whom he was preaching, wasn’t he? This was a group of Israelites in Jerusalem, the folks who had condemned Jesus to death. He told them what they had done in condemning Jesus to death, admitted that they’d acted out of ignorance, and then he called on them to repent. Peter was doing exactly what Jesus had told him to do, proclaiming repentance and forgiveness of sins. 

With Peter and this group of fellow Israelites, Peter’s preaching made sense. It was appropriate. They had a shared religion, shared experiences, they knew something of one another’s stories. They had also just seen God heal a man through Peter’s ministry, and they were curious about how he was able to do that. Peter was saying that it wasn’t he who had healed the man, but Jesus working through him. From there, Peter was able to preach to them about Jesus.

There was shared experience between Peter and the people, and there was a question the folks had asked Peter; his talking to them about Jesus and calling them to repentance was in response to that question. He was also kind when he preached to them, not condemning them.

Nowadays, when I hear of folks telling others they need to repent, I often hear of it being done randomly, with contempt and anger. Someone sees another person, a stranger, doing something and they call them out, telling them they need to repent, or Hell is waiting for them. Not exactly our practice here, but I see it and hear about it. Randomly telling someone you don’t know that they are messing up and need to repent or else, that they need to believe in Jesus or else, is not proclaiming the Gospel. It’s an attack.

Such attacks are not following the preaching of Peter. Such attacks are not following Jesus’ command to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins. 

For one, Jesus very specifically told us not to make our own little determinations of who would be going to Heaven and who would be going to Hell. Every time someone does that, they’re placing themselves in the position of God, basically proclaiming themselves as God. 

Additionally, the Gospel of Jesus and the proclamation of repentance and forgiveness of sins is far from determining who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell. Such a simple who’s in and who’s out is not the faith of Jesus, not the point of the Gospel. A gospel of sin management determining where we go when we die is a fearful corruption of the Gospel of Jesus. 

How many people have been turned away from Jesus, have been turned away from the light and love of God because they haven’t been offered the love of Jesus. They haven’t been offered repentance and forgiveness of sins. All they’ve been offered is condemnation, threats of Hell, and a way out. 

The thing about Hell is, it may be eternal, but it also may be empty at the end of time, because Jesus is there as well, offering repentance and forgiveness of sins. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, not even Hell itself. So, any preaching or condemnatory attacks on people that focus on threats of Hell are putting Hell in the place of God. 

We are called to follow God not as a less scary alternative to torture. We are called to follow God because God is love and the way of love is the way we were created to live.

So, in calling people to repentance and proclaiming forgiveness of sins, we only start with that if we have a shared understanding, shared history, and actually know the folks we’re talking to. In calling people to repentance and proclaiming forgiveness of sins, we are not threatening punishment and then offering a way out. That’s coercion, not love. In calling people to repentance and proclaiming forgiveness of sins, we’re offering out of love, the way of Jesus because of the healing we’ve found in following the way of Jesus.

The people Peter talked to first saw healing. Desiring that healing, they then listened to Peter tell them about Jesus and the healing he brought. 

So, Peter’s first proclamation to the people was not given through his words, but through his actions. He healed a man, or rather Jesus healed a man through Peter’s ministry. Our first and best proclamation of Jesus is usually our own healing, how we live. We proclaim through out actions. 

We repent of our wrongs. We recognize the healing we need. We forgive others and forgive ourselves. When others see and become curious, then we can tell about how Jesus is the one who brought us healing. 

Then, we don’t need to convince anyone to follow Jesus. We don’t need to make the sale with them. We offer the healing we have found, the healing we have been given. We also need to be aware in making that offer, that the Gospel of Jesus has been corrupted by centuries of fear so when many people who don’t believe hear about Jesus, what they first hear is, you’re going to go to Hell if you don’t believe. Even if we don’t say that, people are going to hear it. 

If we don’t believe in that, if we don’t follow the “believe in Jesus or go to Hell” branch of Christianity, we can let folks know that we don’t believe that. If our faith is based not in fear of punishment but in the lived experience of healing and love, we can let folks know of the healing and love we have experienced. 

Healing and love is what we are offering when we tell people about Jesus. Healing and love is what we seek, the balm for our weary souls. Healing and love is what we proclaim when we proclaim repentance and forgiveness, first by living that healing and love, by living our own repentance and forgiveness. Then we can tell others about the healing and love we’ve found in Jesus, the healing and love of repentance and forgiveness when they see the healing in us, become curious, and ask how we have been healed.