Our follow-up sermon is posting prior to Part 1 due to Zoom recording glitches. Please also forgive the two rough patches in this recording — they’re brief, and continue clearly afterward.

Tim Reardon spoke two weeks ago on the topic of Radical Imagination, based in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:48 — about being complete in showing love just as our heavenly Father is complete. This week Tim delves into verses 38-48, and continues a discourse on what Jesus is calling us to in his teaching on loving even our enemies. This is a perfection in love.

At the center of all things, in heaven and earth, is love. This love is, and emanates from, God. We are loved, meant to be loved, and return fully into that love. We do not know love completely, but we strive after it, imagine it, and truly know and overcome by it in God. As God reveals love and shapes us by it, we become one with that love and yield to that love. Our completion is tied to God’s complete love. Love requires us to be loved. We dwell in it. It requires a connection to others, and a peace and wholeness together. It is not a rule, but a way of being that we become formed by.

Today’s sermon reflects back further, beginning in verse 5:38 — do not resist the evil one. But this curious command is read in light of vs. 48 and the love that Jesus is moving towards — this love of God that is our end and what we are created for and moving toward.

The Sermon on the Mount that this passage is part of is a staple for Mennonites. While it may appear passive, the idea we know of from vs. 38 regarding not resisting evil (or harm in CEB) can be a call to action. But today we’ll look at this as a call to a disposition, a posture — an imagination that sees each other and the world in light of God’s love; in light of the love we were created for; in light of the God who sends rain on the just and the unjust — a scandalous statement if we we really think about it.

Hear the audio as Tim delves ever more deeply into this call toward love.

download here