Sermon for May 5, 2024
Readings:
You know, I am tempted to stand up here every Sunday and just flip through any newspaper and talk to y’all about how everyone has just lost their darned minds lately. And I could do it too, because I have lots of good and sound opinions about things and I would love nothing more than to demonstrate my superior opinions by standing here and talking about why everyone else is just crazy. But I’m not gonna do that, as fun as it sounds, and it does sound fun. Few things are more enjoyable than feeling righteous.
But rather than pick on everyone else this morning, I will pick on myself. I heard someone recently say that there is a difference between gossiping and witnessing: gossiping is talking about what someone else is experiencing or going through; witnessing is talking about what you are experiencing or going through. So instead of just gossiping this morning, I am going to witness for a few minutes. The truth is, I don’t really know what everyone else experiences or is going through, but I can talk about my experience with some authority.
So here goes: It is a good thing that I know, love, and fear the Lord and that he has commanded me to love my neighbors, because I have to confess to you that sometimes that is the only way it is going to happen. Because to put it mildly, people are annoying. People are not always loveable. I don’t go driving around saying things like “oh bless you, BMW driver for almost sideswiping me on the parkway.” Nor do I say “thank you Lord, for putting this person in front of me that has not noticed that the light turned green some time ago.” Obviously, I don’t sit and read the paper and say “thank you God, that you have filled the world with people who lack the capacity to think and read critically! I am so glad that people feel comfortable having strong opinions about things that they don’t understand and can’t be bothered to learn about. Praise God!” I do not find it easy to love my neighbors. I especially find it difficult to love people who talk about love all the time like it is just some simple thing, and that we can all just live together peaceably like the whole world is just some idealized hippie commune. I’m sorry, but I just don’t think love is that easy. I have a hard enough time loving people on the highway, or loving my neighbors when they have their late-night and loud Saturday night party once a year, so I can’t imagine how hard it would be for me to love them if they had hurt or killed a loved one of mine, or stollen something that belonged to me. I like to think of myself as basically a decent person/nice guy, but I know for a fact that love does not always come easily for me, especially when it is trying to love people that are being unloving themselves.
There is part of me that blames the internet and social media. I think we are just too much in each other’s business and we interact with each other in ways that are simply inhuman. I think it has become a megaphone for human sinfulness. But it is only part of the problem.
I think the bigger problem is that for all of our talk about love, we can’t help but think about love as a feeling and we forget that it is a commandment. A commandment. If love were simple a peaceful, easy feeling, then God would never have had to command us to do it. We would just do it. But it is a commandment. And, my experience at least, is that the commandments aren’t always easy and they don’t always feel good. Commandments are something that you obey or disobey. I notice that in John’s epistle this morning, when he is talking about love and God, he uses the word “obey.” Obey. Obedience isn’t about just doing what you want to do, or saying what you want to say. Obedience is frequently just the opposite. Obedience is learning to reign in our emotions and impulses, not give in to them. Obedience means recognizing that there is a higher authority than you, your emotions, your opinions, your impulses. Maybe y’all find it easy to just love folks all the time, but I’m here to tell you that I don’t. My witness to you this morning is that sometimes, many times, for me at least, love is a matter of obedience to a commandment and not just a simple response to an emotion. Now John says that God’s commandments are not burdensome. Well, I don’t know about that. I have to think that what John means here is that these commandments are not an impossible burden. I don’t think he is really suggesting that love is easy. I think he is saying that because this commandment comes from God, we will have God’s support when we truly try to obey it. Love is not a burden we bear by ourselves; it is a burden that God shares with us. God knows, better than we do, just how unloveable we can be sometimes. God’s spirit can give us the grace to love, even when it is the last thing that we want to do. God’s grace can give you the power to love people you don’t like. God can help you love the unloveable. And there is real power in that. There is power and there is joy.
I could easily stand up here read the paper and talk about how everyone has lost their minds, but with God’s grace that would cause me to lose my mind too. I just don’t understand why people can’t act right, and it’s crazy making. But then my faith reminds me that for some reason, the creator of the universe, loves these unlovable creatures that don’t act right. And that at least gives me pause to say, OK God, maybe you know something I don’t about these creatures you created. You looked at humans at saw something worth dying for, I can at least bite my tongue, or restrain my fingers from typing that stinging comment. Maybe I can give that car in front of my 10 more seconds before I blow my horn…maybe.
Of course, commandments only work when you have love and respect for the commander and that I suspect is a deeper problem. The commandment to love our neighbors comes from God. If people don’t know, love, or respect God, then why would they care about any of God’s commandments. The love of God comes first. We need to feel and experience the love of God first, before we can truly show it to others. I’m not a child psychologist, but I have heard people argue that babies learn to smile but looking at us when we look at them. In other words, the joy that we feel when looking at our children, the joy that is written on our faces, gets reflected back to us in their smiles. They smile at us, because we are smiling at them. If that is true, then I think it must be true for God as well. We learn to love, because God first loves us. In some mystical way we experience God’s love and joy for us, and by seeing God’s love we learn to imitate it and show it.
I don’t know about your experience, but my experience of living in this world filled with people that have bad opinions (meaning of course opinions that are different from my own), and my experience of living side by side with people that just don’t act right, is that love is hard. It is the hardest commandment God gives us. For me at least, a lot of times loving my neighbor is a matter of pure obedience to the Lord. A lot of times, knowing the Lord and loving the Lord, and knowing his love for me is the only thing that makes it possible. Sometimes it is the only way I can read the newspaper and not lose my own mind.
Inwardly Digest 