LOVE & LOGIC (pre-Sunday School notes)

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  (1 John 4: 7)

From that we reason:  GOD IS LOVE. Therefore, love is God.

Of course, John’s logic is right if we accept his definition of love, which brings us again to the meaning of biblical love.  We are speaking of a love that has little to do with emotion; it is more a state of mind than a feeling of ecstasy or a quickening of the pulse.  It is a sense of the rightness of things. 

We sometimes say that love wins in the end.  In truth, love keeps on loving even if in doing so it seems to lose.  Love loves because ii is right to do so.  Such is the love of God.

So how do we know we love God?  Because we FEEL it in moments of deep religious experience? 

No.  We know we love God because we keep his commandments… I know I love God when I do what He asks me to do.*

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. (1 John 5: 2, 3)

Does love have a chance in a world like ours?

The first answer is that IT DOES NOT MATTER.  Whether love wins or loses, the Christian has sold out to love.  If we believe there is a difference between right and wrong, we know that the issue is not winning or losing but doing what is right….

However, John dared to declare, “Everyone who is born from God defeats the world” (John 5:4).  The Christian were a company of happy warriors confident they WOULD win. * 

Which all brings us back to the reasoning of:  GOD IS LOVE. Therefore, love is God.

True, IF.  If the “love” we equate with God and godliness is love as God defines it.

False, if the “love” we equate with God and godliness is defined any other way by any other source.

So, will you let God define the ways you choose to love; or will you let the ways you love define your god?

Reason among yourselves.  Let me know what you decide.

*from the adult Sunday school lesson for April 19^th in Discovery.  Emphases added and indenting modified by Anderson Graves.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

#Awordtothewise

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

A CRISIS OF FAITH

Many Christians go through a period when they feel like they’ve lost their faith.  If you have gone through or are going through a time like this---- you’re not alone.  One of Jesus’ bravest and most loyal disciples experienced a season of profound doubt so deep that we call him “Doubting Thomas.”

Hear Thomas’ story.  Learn how a believer becomes a doubter.  And learn how to come out of doubt with stronger, life-changing, miracle-working faith.  The message is called A CRISIS OF FAITH.

Listen well.

If you can’t get the audio on your device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/

The podcast is on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/anderson-graves-podcast/id918990482

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

MESSAGE FROM A STARFISH

Last week I had lunch with my friend David Cobb.  David and I disagree on just about every political issue you can imagine, and that’s one of the key reasons I treasure his friendship.  (Another is that David is a really good guy with an honorable, Christian heart.)

We talked about my community work and I told him how overwhelmed I felt, how it seemed that for every one person I helped I was of no use to hundreds of others.  The conversation turned to education and I reminisced about being a classroom teacher before No Child Left Behind and standardized testing.  Each year at my first teaching assignment, I rented a van with my own money and took boys in my English class to the karate dojo where I trained.  I took them through p.t., put them in pads and tossed them around the ring.  I broke bricks with my hands and head and talked to them about being a man, controlling your emotions when you’re attacked, and being a protector not an aggressor.   Afterwards I bought them McDonald’s and drove them home.  One year I couldn’t get a school bus for a field trip to Alabama State University so I put my students on a city bus and we went.   I told David about a student, now grown, married, and successful, who recently told me her career path started on one of those field trips I cobbled together so my kids could see a bigger world.

“I couldn’t do any of that now,” I lamented.  “No teacher could.  They’d be fired and charged with assault.”

That’s when David told me the story of the little girl and the starfish. 

“You can’t save everybody,” David said, “but you made a difference at least to that one young lady.”

I felt better, and I thanked my friend for the encouragement, but the more I thought the more I realized that David was wrong. 

In the story, I’m not the little girl.  I’m the starfish.

After all the times we’ve come down on opposite sides of a news event or social issue, my White, conservative, Republican friend could’ve given up on finding any common ground with another bleeding-heart, racism-is-everywhere, Black, liberal non-profit director and inner-city pastor.   Still, he took the time to listen and to refresh my spirit.  He made a difference to me.

After all the distracted young men who’d wasted the opportunity for higher-education at Alabama State University, Dr. C.P. Everett could’ve written me off after I didn't turn in my final paper on time and failed his class.  Instead, he hired me to my first professional teaching position.  Surely there was a voice in his office or in his head pointing out the futility of wasting his time, a rational voice that said, “You’re not going to make a difference.”   He made a difference to me.

Scripture says that satan acts as “the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night” (Revelations 12: 10).   I’m sure the devil points out God’s own observation in Psalm 143.

The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men,

To see if there are any who understand, who seek God.

They have all turned aside,

They have together become corrupt;

There is none who does good,

No, not one.  (verses 2, 3)

Day and night, the devil points out that  we are a waste of God’s time.  But Jesus still chose to be born into human life and to give His life on the cross to make a difference in our eternal fate.

And still today, when we are dried of hope and direction, Jesus uses the touch of His Holy Spirit and the hands of His servants (like David and Dr. Everett) to pick us up and toss us into the living waters of His presence and His love.  

For all of that, I am one grateful little starfish.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

LADY ANNE'S TREES

Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”    (John 12: 24, 25)

Lady Anne Grimston, born to nobility and married to a Baron, died in 1713 and was buried in St. Peter’s churchyard in Herfordshire County, England; but the wealth she’d enjoyed was dwarfed by the tragedy she’d endured.  Both of her children died in childhood.  Her husband died at 57 with no heir to carry on his hereditary title.  The story goes that on her deathbed Lady Anne declared, “I shall not continue to live. It is as unlikely that I shall continue to live as that a tree will grow out of my body.  If, indeed, there is life hereafter, trees will render asunder my tomb.”

Here’s a 1908 picture of her grave.

Today, 4 large trees sharing one root grow out of Lady Anne’s marble tomb.   

You may not be British nobility, but if you’re a born-again believer in Jesus Christ, then your body is more than the fleshy mortal consequence of a merger between sperm and egg.  If you are a Christian in the genuine spiritual sense of the word, then your body will not just be a corpse; it will be a seed. 

So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. (1 Corinthians 15: 42-43)

Like Lady Anne’s trees, one day in the sweet by-and-by, you will rise from your grave, but as Jesus explained to Lazarus’ sisters, there is a real sense in which the resurrection is now. (John 11: 23-25)

Without Jesus our sins become our lives.  Our lusts for things, our greed for stuff, the forgiveness we refuse to give, the wounds we nurture: they come to define us.  They become our lives.

God bids us die to that life.  Nail it all to the cross with Jesus (Galatians 2:20; 5:24).  Give up those ghosts.  Be buried with Christ “that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4)

Jesus’ Resurrection gives His followers the promise of a personal, bodily resurrection from the dead one day.   The Resurrection also delivers the opportunity for new life right now. 

From the broken shell of whatever is sucking the life out of you, God can bring forth life as abundant as 4 great trees in a cemetery.

But you have to confess your sins and trust in Jesus.  Then believe that you shall continue to live.  Believe that it is as certain that you shall continue to live as it is that trees grow from that body in Herfordshire County, England.   Live that faith and today --- not just hereafter, but today --- you can render asunder the issues that have entombed you and break forth into new life.

God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2: 4-6)

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

BEYOND WHAT YOU KNOW

My great-grandmother used to say, “Some people know all and no nothing.”  This was the problem among the disciples on Resurrection Sunday.  They were so sure that they knew all they needed to know about what happened to Jesus that they almost missed the most important Truth in history.

Hear how they came to accept the Resurrection and learn how we can experience powerful revelation in our lives, even what God is doing goes beyond what we know. It’s a message for Easter and every day called BEYOND WHAT YOU KNOW.

Listen well.

If you can’t get the audio on your device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/

The podcast is on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/anderson-graves-podcast/id918990482

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

SOME HONEST MATH FOR GOOD FRIDAY

I learned the Easter story when I was a young heathen in Holly Springs CME Church in Bassfield, Mississippi. And I believed it.  The cross made sense.  The personal, biological death of Jesus made sense.  His physical resurrection was not a theological stumbling block.  But what I didn’t get, what made no sense to my junior high school mind was all my teachers and pastors demanding that I believe in a God who can’t count.

But Jesus answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12: 39, 40)

In the original Greek, the word three means 3.  The word Jesus used for day means day, but the term translated night actually means night.

Jesus said 3 days and 3 nights.  Jesus meant 3 days and 3 nights.

The gospels agree that Jesus died around 3 P.M.  (Matthew 27: 46-50; Luke23:44-46)

“So how,” I asked in my 13 year old, smart-alecky voice, “you get 3 days between 3 o’clock Friday and eaarrrllly Sunday morning?”

My elders read to me from their study Bible commentaries that say that ancient Jews considered any part of a day to count as a whole day.    O.K.  So let’ count.

Friday, 3 P.M. – sunset	=	1 day
Friday night	=	1 night
Saturday sunrise –sunset	=	2 days
Saturday night	=	2 nights
Sunday morning (He was already risen, but I’ll give you that, too) = 3 days or parts of a day and 2 nights

The crucifixion makes sense, but the Good Friday math doesn’t. 

Jesus was crucified the day before the Sabbath.  Any normal week, that would mean Friday afternoon. (The Jewish Sabbath runs from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday).  But Jesus wasn’t executed during a normal week.  It was Passover.  In Exodus 12, after the 10^th plague, God instituted the feast of Passover, and the guidelines included 2 EXTRA sabbaths.

Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day there shall be a holy convocation, and on the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation for you. No manner of work shall be done on them; but that which everyone must eat—that only may be prepared by you. (Exodus 12: 15, 16)

John’s gospel states the day after the Crucifixion wasn’t a normal Sabbath.  “That Sabbath was a high day” (John 19: 31).

The day after Jesus died was a Passover Sabbath, and the regular weekly Sabbath might have been the day after that.  Let’s count again, class.   

Thursday 3 p.m. - sunset	=	1 day
Passover Sabbath,  High Day, Holy Convocation	=	1 night & 2 days
Weekly Sabbath (Fri- Sat.)	=	2 nights & 3 days
Saturday night	=	3 whole nights & 3 days or parts of day
Sunday morning (He was already risen, but I’ll give you that, too) = bonus

There are a couple of other plausible scenarios. The crucifixion could have occurred on Wednesday, but if you base your math on the Bible and not on the church’s rich 2,000 year old tradition, you can’t start your count on Friday afternoon. 

So Jesus wasn’t crucified on Good Friday.  Jesus also almost certainly wasn’t born on  December 25^th of the Julian calendar.  Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.  didn’t celebrate his birthday every 2^nd Monday of January.  The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 2^nd, not the 4^th of July.  And the Last Supper wasn’t at 11 A.M. on the 1^st Sunday of the month.

The day we celebrate isn’t as important as what we celebrate. 

One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind.  He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. (Romans 14: 5-6)

Commemorating the crucifixion on the Friday before Easter is not a sin.  It’s a convenience.    This Good Friday I’ll attend 3 worship services in 3 cities and preach at two of them.   I will honor the traditional day.   But I won’t preach the day as doctrine.

When we defend the Good Friday TRADITION as a DOCTRINE we argue that Jesus didn’t really mean what He explicitly said.  We tell questioning believers that God can’t count. 

As Jesus said, we “[make] the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down.” (Mark 7: 13)

Some people never question their culture’s or church’s traditions.  But there’s always that one kid.  He/she is sitting there listening more intently than all the stewards and deacons and mothers in white. That kid has questions because that kid wants the Truth.   You’ve convinced him that the Bible is true, but then you tell him to accept a tradition that contradicts the Bible.   He won’t accept that. It just doesn't add up.  He’d rather reject both the tradition and the Bible.  I know this because I was one of those kids.

All those kids want are answer that make sense.  All they need is some honest math.

This Good Friday is a good Friday to start giving it to them.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

EPITAPH or EPITHET

When I was an English teacher I pushed my adolescent writers to expand their vocabularies, but sometimes, while trying to impress me, my students would stretch their word choices beyond their grasp of definitions.   They’d use big words, but the wrong big words.

For example, sometimes students would confuse the words epithet and epitaph.

An epitaph is “something written or said in memory of a dead person; especially : words written on a gravestone.” (Merriam Webster online)

An epithet is a word or phrase, often “an offensive word or name that is used as a way of abusing or insulting someone” (Merriam Webster online), as in “a racial epithet.”

In the Bible, when a prominent character died, Scripture often gave a one verse summary of his/her life --- an epitaph.  Epitaph not epithet.

But then, there was King Jehoram of Jerusalem.  The summary of his life is in 2 Chronicles 21:20.

He was thirty-two years old when he became king. He reigned in Jerusalem eight years and, to no one’s sorrow, departed.

The King James Version says that Jehoram died without being desired.  That English phrase is a single Hebrew word.

Jehoram’s epitaph is kind of an epithet.

How sad.

Remember that other people will bury you.  Someone else will decide what your tombstone says.  Even if you have the stone carved while you’re living, someone else will still decide.

How sad it would be for you or I to attain great titles, to gain positions of power and personal prosperity, and then die “to no one’s sorrow.”  To be remembered as an epithet.

Live daily the verse you want carved on your grave.  Be now the person you want preached in your eulogy.

By your actions, choose an epitaph that is not an epithet.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064