May 19, 2019

Jesus Loves Me, This I Know
4th Sunday after Easter, Year C
Becky Robbins-Penniman

If you hang out with academic theologians – something I’m not going actually recommend to you, but I used to love doing it – and ask them who THE most important theologian of the 20th Century was, Swiss theologian Karl Barth will be on everyone’s list of the top 3. He was known all over the world, loved by Protestants and Roman Catholics alike. He wrote a systematic theology that is over 9,000 pages long. He was on the cover of Time magazine in 1962 when he was 76 years old and on a speaking tour in America, visiting a bunch of universities and seminaries full of young folks who thought he rocked.

After one of those lectures, there was a Q&A session, and a student asked “Can you sum up your theology in one sentence?” Remember, this is a scholar who wrote a 9,000 page systematic theology! He said: Yes, I can. In the words of a song I learned at my mother’s knee: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” There’s no report that Barth went on, but most of us know the next lines: Sing them with me if you do: Little ones to him belong, they are weak and he is strong.

Could it really be that simple? Yes.

Read the full sermon text HERE.

 

WORSHIP BULLETINS ADDITIONAL SERMONS