If your faith was an Infomercial…

This week at Buckhead Church we had the privilege of hearing from Scot McKnight (http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/).  Several years ago he wrote a book called The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others and his sermon on Sunday set up what the Jesus Creed is and how you can apply it in your life.

Considerable time was spent telling the story of the Shema, the Jewish prayer.  “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deut.6:4-5 NIV )  To hear the complete message go to: http://www.buckheadchurch.org/messages

The central idea: How do you love God and how do you love other people?  There are 613 commandments in Jewish law all of them can be separated into loving God and loving others according to Dr. McKnight.  He also points out that Jesus was able to break down these 613 commandments into two commandments.  This is the Jesus Creed:  “…’Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’  The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  There is no commandment greater than these.”

Obviously this is a VERY watered down explanation, however, it is sufficient to proceed and answer the questions!

Dr. McKnight asked a very interesting question during his sermon: “Who annoys you?”  I have to admit that my list wasn’t a short one: people that don’t know how to drive, people that don’t pay attention to their surroundings, people that walk on the wrong side of the hallway in the mall, etc.

I think identifying your neighbors that you should love as yourself is pretty easy.  Doing something about it is the hard part.

Question 1: How are you showing your neighbors that you love them like you love yourself?

I know you won’t believe this, but in my Journal during the worship service I put a note in about Billy Mays.  This was about an hour before we all went to lunch and I saw a twitter about his death.  His show, “Pitchmen,” is one of my new favorite shows.  The show follows Billy and Anthony Sullivan as they work with would be inventors to market their products via “As Seen on TV” ads.

The rules for accepting a product are set in stone by Mays and Sullivan: It must be something that fills a need (solves a problem), It must be easily explained, It must have a sort of “wow” demo – proof that the product does what it says, and it must have the right pricing structure. (Paraphrase from an Article by Scott Pooler, Tampa Internet Business Examiner).

In much the same way this is what the Jesus Creed calls us to do with our lives.  Jesus fills the needs of our neighbors, grace is easily explained, it doesn’t cost anything, and most importantly: If we will just love others in the way that we love ourselves that will be one MAJORLY impressive demo!

Question 2: How are you doing in your infomercial?

The final point from Sunday was how to live out the Jesus Creed.  In Matthew 10:42 Jesus says, “And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.”  Jesus calls us to use whatever we have to turn everyday people into everyday neighbors.  Even something as small as a cup of water.

I couldn’t help but think about the fountains downtown in Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta.  These fountains are more like gysers that have been placed in the pavement and during the summer children will run back and forth in the fountain getting wet.  The jets of water shoot up from the ground at random and catch the children by surprise.

On December 31, 2003 my friend Bryan Bland was running through the fountain trying not to get hit by the cold water on a very chilly December night.  He was successful in making it through everytime except the last time.  Just as he was about to get through for the last time a jet of water sprang up and soaked his back and part of his pants.  He wasn’t expecting to get wet.

Those fountains should represent our desire to not only provide those in our lives with a cup of cold water, but to SOAK them with cold water when they least expect it.  We have buckets of water at our disposal.  Scot McKnight challenged us to live the Jesus Creed for a month to see how it changes us.  Let’s not be content this month to simply hand out cups of cold water.

Let us pour that water over our cities and our towns.  Let us give that water to our families, our coworkers, our friends, and most importantly to those people that annoy us.

Question 3: Who do you need to pour water on this month?

Question 4: What are you waiting for?