Tonight is about absolute love. Tonight is about Jesus of Nazareth. Tonight is about the God who comes down to earth to live, suffer and die with and for us.
Jesus' disciples believed he was the Messiah, a King sent by God who would bring about peace and justice. Yet, he didn't come on a war horse. He didn't come to conquer.
He came to serve. He gave his time and attention to the poor, the sick, the needy; to women and children. He spent time with the despised, the lowly, the "sinners". He washed his friends' feet.
And then, he gave his life. He talked about loving enemies and not resisting an evil person - and when they came to arrest him, he did not resist. In fact, he rebuked his friends when they tried to defend him using violence. He was tried unfairly, condemned unjustly. And he died.
He died because he loved us. He died, as he said, as a ransom: his death redeems us. To redeem means "to buy back". You redeem a slave to buy his freedom. Jesus, through his death, redeemed us from evil to buy our freedom, so we could belong to good instead of evil.
Tonight is about the One who loved us enough to suffer and die for us. Tonight I will forget about the world and its strife, and remember Jesus, who overcame evil with good, overcame hate with love, overcame, incredibly, through his death.
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