FUMC Bentonville Sermon Podcast First United Methodist Church | Downtown Bentonville

Joel 2:1-11
Getting ready for the eclipse the next day, and also coming out of the season of Easter, we look at how people have viewed heavenly events like eclipses as apocalyptic signs, but we will also discuss the prophetic call to prepare for the Day of the Lord. It continues the prophetic call to love and care for each other or face the consequences of a world turned upside down.

1 Corinthians 1:18-25
On this April Fools’ Day eve, we will acknowledge how ridiculous our faith story seems on some level, and yet we cannot imagine living with any other story. This foolish story is the beginning of hope and faith, and the means of true love.

Matthew 5:43-48; Matthew 26:14-25, 47-50
This week we confront Jesus’ teaching that we should love our enemies, and we also confront the reality that loving our enemies is not a safe thing to do. It very well may lead to our own profound loss. To what extreme are we called to love? Is this kind of love just for Jesus or for us too? Is it true that the test of our faith is not if we love Jesus but if we love Judas?

Luke 15: 11-32; Matthew 5:38-42
The prodigal son story and the turn the other cheek teaching show that foolish love ignores offenses and just seeks to love, and love abundantly. Note: the definition of prodigal is wastefully extravagant. Prodigal is better applied to the father than the son in this story. Because this shares some of the themes of the previous week, this is a good time to reflect on the response of the older brother, which is too often our own response.

Mark 17:1-17, John 2:1-11
Casting demons into pigs to save one person and saving the best wine for last both prove that foolish love creates a tremendous amount of waste – wasteful grace.

Matthew 20:1-16, 18:12-13
The parable of the workers in the vineyard and the story of the 99 sheep left behind for the sake of the 1 show us that foolish love is not an equitable equation. It is not a utilitarian decision, but in fact, sometimes it means making the least fair decision in order to include more in the field of love.