Last week, we started looking at what the world around us wants to know about Christians. We talked about the kind of faith that the world around us is saying, do you have that kind of faith? Today, we are going to look at love. I told you last week, that one verse has been driving me as a pastor for the past several years. Let’s read it together from 1 Corinthians 13:13: So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Some of you might be wondering, aren’t we doing it out of order? We are, but I think that is okay. It will all make sense as we go on.
Dan Kimball recently wrote a book called I like Jesus but not the church. In it he said they interviewed hundreds of people to ask their opinions on Jesus and Christians.
He said, when we asked people about Jesus and what they thought of him, their faces would light up. They would say things like, “Jesus was beautiful.” “I want to be like Jesus.” “Jesus was a liberator of women.” “I’m all about Jesus.” “I want to be a follower of Jesus.” “Jesus was enlightened and had higher truth.”
With the 2nd question, their expressions changed dramatically. “Christians have taken the teachings of Jesus and really messed them up.” “I would want to be a Christian, but I have never met one.” “Christians are dogmatic and close-minded.” “Christians are supposed to be loving, but I’ve never met any who are.”
“Christians have a political agenda, they are judgmental and negative, it is male dominated, they are homophobic, arrogant concerning other religions, and they are hate-filled.”
Now how is it possible that Jesus and the religion that bears his name became such polar opposites in the eyes of the world? Is that an accurate view? How is it that a man who has made such an impact on history with his simple message of loving God and loving others, how did it get twisted in their minds?
Listen to some of these quotes. Jerry Fallwell said, "If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being."
George Bush Sr. once said, "No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
Here is what one Christian said on the subject of homosexuality, “Those who practice homosexuality should swiftly be put to death by the government.”
After September 11th, several Christian leaders spoke out about the attacks. Ann Coulter said, "We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
Jerry Fallwell said, "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ’you helped this happen.’"
Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue said, "I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good...Our goal is a Christian nation.”
We have all seen the signs from protests about how God hates abortionists and how God hates homosexuals. I don’t know about you, but even as I wrote these quotes down and read them, I am embarrassed.
So I ask you again, how did the message of Jesus, a message of love, compassion, and grace. How did that message become this?
If you have your bibles, you can open them to John 13. Let me set the stage about what is happening in John 13. Jesus is with his disciples and we are getting closer to the time of Jesus’ death on the cross. John 13 starts with Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. In the 1st century, no one wore shoes, they wore sandals in a world of dirt, the foot washer was one of the lowest jobs that someone could have. It was the job the lowest man on the totem pole got to do, not something that people stood in line to do.
So Jesus and his disciples get into the room, during the Passover meal Jesus gets up and proceeds to wash his disciples feet. It is easy for us when we hear this to think, okay, that was nice of Jesus to do that, but we will see later how important this act was.
While this is going on we are told that it is already in Judas’ heart to betray Jesus and turn him over to the authorities to be arrested. What I think is interesting, that even though Judas is going to betray Jesus, and he knows Judas is going to betray him, we are told he washes Judas’ feet along with the others. After Jesus washes the disciples feet, Judas leaves.
This is what it says in verse 31: When he (Judas) had gone out, Jesus said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ’Where I am going you cannot come.’ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
Here is what one scholar had to say about this passage: Numerous academic studies have compared this passage with those of dying teachers and leaders of antiquity. Jacob’s last words in Genesis 49 are typical of this form, as is Moses’ farewell in Deuteronomy 31 – 34. Not only does Moses identify his successor, but he gives teachings that must be recorded and a final blessing. Apocryphal Jewish literature from Jesus’ day offers more tantalizing parallels. In the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs each of the twelve sons of Jacob give farewell instructions, blessings, and prayers. In the Testament of Moses, we overhear Moses’ final words to Israel and Joshua.
Jewish testaments imagine the dying or departing person surrounded by his most intimate friends and family. Standard literary elements generally appear. For instance, they always show a concern for the comfort and encouragement of those left behind. Often there is an exhortation to obey the law, and a deposit of writings is left behind. In some cases, the departing person passes his “spirit” to his followers or successors. Moses and Elijah do this for Joshua and Elisha.
In the farewell of Jesus many of these elements appear. So we have all the elements of a Jewish farewell. Which is important as we think through the importance of what is said in this passage. These words, this message is that important to Jesus that he is sharing it at this moment.
I want to zero in on verse 34 and 35. Jesus says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
It isn’t that this is a new command that the disciples have never heard before. This is all over the gospels, this is all over the Old Testament. What is new is the mode of the love we are to have. Jesus says, “love one another in the same way that I have loved you.” Remember what happened right before he said this, he washed their feet. Jesus is saying, you are to copy me. Jesus is saying, that to truly love one another, we must pursue a life of servanthood and sacrifice.
When we look at it from this perspective, it is easy to see why we have become the way that we are. It is a lot easier to shout, protest, say mean things, to build walls or just talk about our beliefs instead of following the command. Maybe it is because it is easier to do what we have always done, maybe we think Jesus’ command sounds too simplistic. There has to be more to it than that, right? What if there wasn’t.
N.T. Wright said, “This passage is the badge that the Christian community wears before the watching world. As we read verse 35 we are bound to cringe with shame at the way in which professing Christians have treated each other down the years. We have turned the gospel into a weapon of our own various cultures. We have hit each other over the head with it, burnt each other at the stake with it. We have defined the ‘one another’ so tightly that it means only ‘love the people who reinforce your own sense of who you are.’”
Dallas Willard said, “It is very hard to be right and not hurt anybody with it.”
For so long, I think we as Christians have been more caught up in being right, on being on the correct side of the aisle that we have lost the essence of the message of Jesus. Love. Love one another.
This is what I think led the early church to grow as fast it did. They lived in a world a lot like ours. They had to deal with wars, other religions, different opinions on sexuality. It was a pagan culture. Yet, you do not read in church history books about protests, about trying to get governments to do what they wanted. Instead, they infiltrated the world they lived in by their love for God and each other. In the early 3rd century, the church father Tertullian wrote, “It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us! ‘See,’ they say, ‘how they love one another…see how they are ready even to die for one another.’”
Here is another way we mess up in this area. Gossip. We are very good at this in churches around the world. Do you know how we get away with it? Prayer requests. Now usually our prayer requests are genuine, but other times we say, “Let’s pray for so and so. Oh what’s going on? I shouldn’t say, but I guess I’ll tell you so you know how to pray.” And off the rumor mill goes. It is very easy to do, but when we do that, how does that make us different from anybody else?
You could walk out this door and join any club in town. You can join a biking or running club. A club for left handed moms with blond haired kids. The list goes on, Jesus is trying to say, there should be something different about the church.
One author puts it like this, “Nothing so astonishes a fractured world as a community in which radical, faithful, genuine love is shared among its members. There are many places you can go to find communities of shared interest. There are many places you can go to find people just like yourself, who live for sports or music or gardening or politics. But it is the mandate of the church to become a community of love, a circle of Christ’s followers who invest in one another because Christ has invested in them, who exhibit love not based on the mutuality and attractiveness of its members, but on the model of Christ who washed the feet of everyone.”
But loving each other is hard right? Showing love to other Christians and to non-Christians is difficult. It is easier for me to wear a Christian shirt than to listen to a friend who is going through a difficult marriage. Instead of stepping into the dirt and pain of each other’s lives, it is easier to say, “I’ll pray for you.” While neither one of those things are necessarily wrong, we miss what God wants us to do. It is also easier for me to point out why I am right and you are wrong instead of trying to figure out what we can learn from each other.
Frederick Buechner, who is one of my favorite authors has this to say on the topic of how tough it is to loving others: “Loving our neighbors, loving each other, is easier to talk about. God knows we are none of us much good at it much of the time, but at least we can see each other with our eyes. We can see each other’s faces especially, and every once in a while, if we have our eyes open, we can see something of what is within those faces. Even with strangers sometimes, people we pass on the street or find sitting across from us in a bus or a waiting room; even sometimes with people we know very well but seldom take the trouble really to look at – we see something that stops us in our tracks. We catch a glimpse of some unexpected beauty or pain or need in another’s face, or maybe we just notice the tilt of an old man’s Agway cap, or the way a young woman rests her cheek on the palm of her hand, or the way a child looks out the window at the rain; and for a moment, then, our hearts goes out to them in ways too deep for words. We would love them right if we only could. We would love them truly and forever if we only knew how.”
Think about it, what is more difficult to learn than love? How do you love someone when you get no love in return – only withdrawal or ingratitude? How do you love without being trapped or used by the other person? How do you love when you have your own problems? When do you take care of yourself? How do you love with both compassion and honesty? When you are compassionate, people use you; but when you are honest, people get angry. So what is the balance?
This is how Paul Miller answers this question, “We instinctively know that love leads to commitment, so we look away when we see a beggar. We might have to pay if we look too closely and care too deeply. Loving means losing control of our schedule, our money and our time. When we love we cease to be the master and become a servant.” And that is where love leads us, back to servanthood, just like we talked about earlier.
Last week, I shared part of our story from the past several years. Katie and I were hurt by people we trusted, other Christians. When it was happening, it felt like they didn’t care. And it was easy to be mad, to say horrible things about them. There were times that I wanted to pray that God would hurt their churches. One night when I was so mad I said to Katie, what am I supposed to do about this anger? And she said, why don’t we pray for them. Why don’t we pray that God will bless them? I have to be honest, that was not my first choice. But that is what we did. The anger I felt, the pain started to subside in me. It was still there, I still feel pain when I think about it, but God started working in us.
What about when people say bad things about you? It is bound to happen. I have been asked at different times why I am not so critical about people who disagree with what I think. A lot of Christians are very outspoken about their beliefs and about the people who disagree with them. My answer, I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of being misunderstood or talked bad about.
A few years ago I googled my name and found that I was on a heretics list. Now before you think, what kind of guy did we hire. The other people on the list are people who live on my bookshelf and yours. People like Rob Bell, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Dallas Willard, Billy Graham was even on this list. Pretty much anybody that has made an impact for the kingdom in the past 50 years. And there was my name. I was pretty excited about it, and sent a link to all my friends, I mean where else is my name going to appear with all of these people? The thing that I couldn’t get over about the list, was that Christians had made it, and they thought they were right in doing so.
Soon after moving to Wisconsin a radio station there did a piece on the emerging church movement, which is what Beginnings strives to be in a lot of ways. In the conversation with several pastors they bashed all kinds of people. Many of the people I mentioned and I was one of them. For me, I have come to the conclusion that if you and I disagree, that is okay. Life will go on, there is no reason for me to get bent out of shape about it. There is a good chance I might be wrong.
On the way out here, when my dad and I were driving somewhere in Texas we were talking about this. He thought it was important to take stands and point out where you think you are right. That has been a popular opinion for many years. So I asked him, what of your beliefs are you absolutely sure about? Would you die for your belief on how the world is going to end? But you would get the idea from some Christians that they would. And this short verse keeps ringing in the background, stop shouting, they will know you by your love for each other.
Think about it this way, and this is where we will close. Three weeks ago we looked at Acts 2. Do you remember some of the verses in that passage? Remember in Acts 2, verse 45 it says, no one had any needs, the community of believers met each other’s needs. That refers to financial and physical needs, but I believe it also refers to spiritual and emotional and relational needs as well. In verse 43 it says that they were filled with awe and wonder at the miracles happening among them. Think about your family, your extended family, kids, in-laws, parents. How tough is it for you to love all of them? Now imagine the message that is sent to the world around us if we could be described as a community that is known by love. Do you think Tucson would look up and wonder what is going on, do you think they would think that is a miracle happening among them? I do. That is the dream, to be known as a community that lives by faith and is known by love.
Ryan is going to come up and play a song now, and while he does I want you to ask some questions. Are we known for our love or something else here at beginnings? Think about your interaction with others who a part of this community, would you describe your interactions as ones filled with love?
