Who Frustrates You?

Below is an except from a sermon from Rob Bell, Mars Hill, in Grand Rapids, MI. I have been heavily influenced by Rob and his ability to pull you into the history and the life of the scriptures and make them relevant to our world today. The call for us to be actively engaged in our communities bringing heaven to earth and sharing in the burdens of our neighbors. He calls us to take part in bring equality to the entire earth.

I would encourage you to visit marshill.org and begin downloading his sermons from the past few years and listen to them all.

"Others" - April 27th, 2008 - Study in Phillipians 1

"The strange, the different, the un-intelligble the subjective aspect of my neighbor is the garment in which the one thing meets me. The one-thing that Paul is referring to is, God’s grace. Here is what Paul is saying, you wanna understand God’s love? Do you want to understand God’s grace? Do you want to understand, truly understand, what it means for God to have enveloped you in God’s grace, peace, forgiveness, hope and light? Orient yourself around the strange, different, un-intelligble, the co-worker, the embarrassing relative, the person who absolutely sends you out of your gourd. Circle around them and in your frustration of pain of trying to serve and love them well, you will be face to face with what it means for God to have embraced and loved you in all of your strangeness, difference and un-intelligibility."

He says, that person who most gets under your skin, they may in fact be the garmet of God’s grace that is coming to you to bring you more fully into the love of God.

If I could even take one step to circle the interests of that person, it would be a step into understanding more fully for what it means for God to love and accept me. If I could learn to not hold their past against them, maybe and not always holding them accountable for their past, maybe I would come to understand what it means for God to not hold my past against me.

Maybe if I could take one lap around them with all of their flaws, I would better understand the God who loves and embraces me with all of my flaws.

Paul’s says, the other, the one in your midst who most rubs you the wrong way. The strange, the different, the un-intelligble, the subjective one who doesn’t fit into how you think the world operate, may in fact be the grace of God coming to you saying, “I drive you nuts and I am an invitation to understand the trinitarian nature of the universe all the more fully my friend."

Paul continues to say, that we discover respect for each other not on this ground or that, perhaps on no grounds, counter to ever ground, there is no reason for me to actually go out of my way to love this person. Counter to every ground simply because we are bidden when we look at our neighbor to think of the One Thing of grace.

It is the most frustrating, maddening dimension of this person that is God’s invitation to more fully enter in the grace and peace that God has extended to me.

The claim my neighbor makes on me, the patience. On my attention. On my consideration. On my love. Is the claim on the one thing, God’s grace."