Love. And Hate.
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
September 12, 2010
September 12, 2010. Yesterday of course was the 9th anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks in American history. We were all there. We all remember exactly where we were, and what we were doing, when we first heard the news. We will never forget it. I have been surprised to find that the horror of that day has never moved far below the surface for me. It never takes more than a few seconds of really remembering it, really thinking about it, and I find myself right back there, recalling vividly the images of that day. I think most Americans probably feel the same way. I remember the very intense feelings of unity in our country in those days after the attack. We had experienced something together that – for a period of time – defined us as Americans. I remember walking through stores, looking at other people, feeling like I was in a daze, and sensing that other people looked like they were too. I remember the pride I felt when I’d see someone wearing a shirt with an American flagged, emblazoned with the words, “These colors don’t run.” I even remember the conversations I had with Christy in those days. They were days where I felt I had to do something. I had to make a difference somehow. I even thought about joining the military. Seriously. And I know I’m not alone in that. There was a brokenness and a vulnerability in our country that was beautiful, filled as it was with the pain and grief of three-hundred million people. The world felt our pain and mourned with us – at least most of the world did. If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that the hearts of most people go out to the underdog, to the one who is suffering, who has suddenly experienced a sharp blast of pain and who, for the moment, lies bleeding. And that was us for a time. Broken and bleeding. Dazed and confused.
But the brokenness didn’t last long. After all, we are Americans, and this is the United States of America. These colors don’t run, remember? Just beneath that tender grief was something else – burning anger. Desire for revenge. Fantasies of payback. Burning anger. Desire for revenge. Fantasies of payback. Burning anger. Desire for revenge. Fantasies of payback.
Hard to bulid a Biblical, or even quasi-Biblical, sermon on that. Unless of course you base it on a couple of passages in the Old Testament. Hard to find any Jesus in it at all, though. It’s hard to find because that’s not where Jesus is. Now I’m not being critical here. I’m not suggesting that I myself wasn’t filled for a time with burning anger. With a desire for revenge. With fantasies of payback. I was. Most of us were. That’s a natural place to be after the shock and trauma we had experienced. The problem my friends is that many never moved beyond it. Anger, revenge, and payback are normal responses, but they are purely human responses. They come from the lizard brain – that part in all of us that simply wants to fight. They are meant to alert us to danger – they are not meant to become our personal philosophy of life. They are the worse angels of our nature – precisely the things that spirituality – a clear view of God and God’s activity in the world – are meant to overcome, to redeem, and to transform.
Love is the law. Let me rephrase that. Love is not the law if we refuse to move beyond the lizard brain. Love is not the law if we choose to live in fear. Love is not the law for those who call themselves Christians but choose to accept in themselves attitudes of prejudice and bigotry. But love is the law for all who wish to be followers of Christ – for those who wish to know and experience God deep in their bones – for all who desire that God’s kingdom would actually be on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus said,
Matthew 22:34-40 (NIV)
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.
35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
37 Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'
38 This is the first and greatest commandment.
39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'
40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
All the law and the prophets. In other words, this is what all of it is pointing to. This is what it’s all about. The Apostle Paul understood these words from Jesus and stated it like this:
Romans 13:8-10 (MSG)
8 Don't run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along.
9 The law code—don't sleep with another person's spouse, don't take someone's life, don't take what isn't yours, don't always be wanting what you don't have, and any other "don't" you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself.
10 You can't go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.
And the Apostle John, whose gospel we have looked at for the past twenty-some weeks, said it like this:
1 John 4:7-21 (NIV)
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us.
20 If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
My friends, should this not have been the end of the matter two millennia ago? The gospels and these letters from Paul and John were all probably written by A.D. 100 or so. They are definitive words. They do not suggest that love is a great ideal and it would be groovy if everybody loved each other. And much to the consternation of some super-conservative Christians, Jesus does not say that all the law and the prophets hang on whether somebody is gay or straight, or whether or not they have had an abortion, or whether they have joined this or that religion, or whether they have managed to stay off welfare and be good, productive, safe, middle-class citizens. And I’m not proof texting here. These are Christ’s words, not mine, that it ALL comes down to love. Read these words carefully and let them sink in and you will realize that anything in scripture that seems to indicate that this is about anything OTHER than love was stuff that came from the biases of the writers themselves. They, of course, were human beings just like you and I. They, of course, were “working out their salvation” just like you and I. And they, of course, struggled with Christ’s words much like you and I. Jesus is quite clear about love, and I think Paul and John sum up this message of love quite well.
So 2000 years later, how does a so-called Christian pastor in Gainesville justify a demonstration where people would burn a religious book that is precious to a billion of the earth’s people? How does a so-called Christian church in Westboro, TN justify a website called godhatesfags.com? (BTW, if you go to this website, and I’m not necessarily recommending it, you’ll see that according to this church, God hates almost EVERYBODY). Less on the fringes, how do every day Christians justify bigotry toward those of other races, religions, sexual orientations, or anything else? How do Christians justify any lack of love that we find in ourselves?
I’ll tell you how. We justify it with fear. Fear is nearly always what produces hate. Americans were scared to death in those days after 9/11. We felt violated and our deepest instinct was to do anything that was necessary to restore a sense of security again. We felt angry at the senseless loss of life. We felt powerless and just wanted to climb back on top again, to regain some control. And as natural as these feelings are, and quite apart from whatever measures our government took and did not take, this quick path back to control and power is not where we find God on an individual basis. This is because the drive toward control and power comes from fear, and there is no fear in love, and God is love, therefore there is no fear in God.
There’s a passage I often share at funerals. It is from the book of Lamentations, written by the prophet Jeremiah.
Lamentations 3:19-31 (MSG)
19 I'll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness, the taste of ashes, the poison I've swallowed.
20 I remember it all—oh, how well I remember— the feeling of hitting the bottom.
21 But there's one other thing I remember, and remembering, I keep a grip on hope:
22 GOD's loyal love couldn't have run out, his merciful love couldn't have dried up.
23 They're created new every morning. How great your faithfulness!
24 I'm sticking with GOD (I say it over and over). He's all I've got left.
25 GOD proves to be good to the man who passionately waits, to the woman who diligently seeks.
26 It's a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from GOD.
27 It's a good thing when you're young to stick it out through the hard times.
28 When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence.
29 Bow in prayer. Don't ask questions: Wait for hope to appear.
30 Don't run from trouble. Take it full-face. The "worst" is never the worst.
31 Why? Because the Master won't ever walk out and fail to return.
What are we told is the spiritual response to suffering? How are we told that we will find God in it? We’re told to wait, to seek, to quietly hope, to stick it out, to go off by ourselves and enter into silence, to bow in prayer, to not ask questions, to not run from trouble, from the darkness that is swallowing up our hearts and filling up our minds with fear, but instead to “take it full-face.” To not try to just “get on with life,” which is why Bush’s advice post-9/11 to get back to the malls and start spending money again was terrible advice. This crushing blow should have been a time for reflection, for quiet prayer, for entering the silence, for receiving grace and humility. It was not a time to again pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps, but rather a time when we should have been encouraged to not run from our fear, to take it full-face, and to trust that the worst – no matter how bad it looks – is never the worst, because God surely will not fail to return.
Ironically, the T-shirts after 9/11 that proudly proclaimed “These colors don’t run” were actually expressing the particular way in which we as Americans DO run. We run from silence, from humility, from quietness, from reflection, straight to the place of power. When we are afraid, we jump into our tanks and planes and warships and we pick up guns and grenades. We did it in Vietnam and Korea because we were afraid of Communists. We did it in Iraq in the early 90’s because we were afraid of losing control of our oil. We are doing it now because we are afraid of religious extremists. This is what we do. That pastor in Gainesville is afraid, and because of his fear, he is hateful. That church in Westboro, Kansas hates almost everybody. They view God as hateful, and they are living under massive weights of fear.
Listen, my friends, I love you. I know many of you are as gracious as the day is long. Many of you are as loving as the ocean is deep. But I also know there are bigots among us. Now here’s where this gets fun. There are bigots among us who love Jesus. Can you accept that? This does not mean bigotry is okay, this does not mean racism and lack of love are acceptable, it just means that there are good, well-meaning people who, for one reason or another, have simply failed to understand the complete incompatibility John talked about between saying we love God, and yet not loving our fellow human beings. So we have bigots among us who love Jesus, only they don’t realize that their bigotry is actually a huge barrier that stands between them and God. It keeps them from experiencing God’s mercy and grace in their own lives and from then being able to pour out that mercy and grace to others.
1 John 4:20
20 If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
If you are a bigot, you probably already know it. After all, you can sit there right now and do two things which conclusively prove that you are a bigot. First is that you can make a list of people (and maybe classes of people, grouped by race, religion, economics, or whatever) that you feel contempt for. Second is that you can give all kinds of reasons why you don’t have to love the people on that list. You are mad at somebody. You think you deserve revenge. Somebody, or a group of sombody’s, have a payback coming and you know what they say about paybacks. So you think those reasons for not loving, for clearly living in violation of what Jesus said was the entire point of spiritual life to begin with, you think they are so solid and so air-tight that it doesn’t even bother you that you are a bigot. Actually you probably think it’s funny. And in addition to thinking your bigotry is funny, you probably openly mock those who are taking the call to love seriously. You have lines about how that kind of love is naïve, and how you’re just living in the “real world.” In other words, you have carefully constructed your world around your bigotry. But your bigotry definitely is not funny and ironically the world of sacrificial love is the world that Jesus said is on the way in – that is actually inevitable – and it is the world of payback, revenge, tit-for-tat, hostility and hatred that has no future.
Now I think the right thing to do probably is for all of us to try to find traces of bigotry in ourselves. We all have people we struggle to love. We all find it easy to cling to our own views of the world and to be fearful and suspicious of those who disagree with us. It’s just that some of us venture down into that darkness, we face it full-on, and allow God’s love to begin to displace fear and hatred. Others of us simply remain in the place of power, looking down on people and making sure we never have to stare into the dark abyss of our contempt and bigotry.
Who are people that are a target for bigotry and hatred today? Muslims are certainly a major target group. Interestingly, many times the grounds we give for not hating Muslims is that the majority of Muslims are peaceful. Of course that is true, but Jesus’ words to us were not simply to love peaceful Muslims. His words were that we love our enemies, those who hate us, who are trying to kill us. We are commanded to love them, to try to understand their world as it looks to them, and to take pity on them. This doesn’t necessarily mean we just lay down and let them kill us, but we do not have to hate them. Jesus refused to hate his killers and forgave them as they were in the act of killing him. So yes, it’s true that most Muslims are peaceful – but if we are called to love even the murderers and terrorists, are we not then also called to love the ones who pose no threat to us at all? Of course. There is no fear in love, and there is no love in fear. Politicians are another current target of hatred and rage and fear and suspicion. We are called to love them, to support them and pray for them, not to constantly mock them, not to sarcastically deride them all the time. We are not called to live as if they are calling the shots in this world. Our faith is supposed to lead us to confidence in God.
My friends, when any human being can provoke a reaction of hate or anger in us, it points to something in us that we need to look at. It says a great deal more about us than it does about whoever we hate. As long as we think the enemy is over there – as long as we think the darkness is out there – rather than settling into silence, doing some reflecting, quietly waiting on God, and realizing that I have met the enemy and the enemy is me – as long as we are unable to see that our hatred is not provoked by other people but wells up within the very dark and broken places in us that God wants to fix and bring light to – well, then we remain locked in fear, in anger, and in bigotry.
Today is a big day, folks. It is the weekend that we are observing the 9th anniversary of 9/11. It is the weekend we are celebrating Wildwind’s 8th birthday. It seems like a good time to reflect on love and fear, love and bigotry, love and hatred – to think about the birth of our church and reflect on how it was birthed in love, how it was created with a vision that we would be a community of people who are 1) daring to stare down the darkness that is in our own souls; 2) not making excuses for living other than how Jesus called us to live; 3) taking love seriously as Christ’s vision for the world. See, we are called on, brothers and sisters, to bring grace and redemption out of our churches, out of our pulpits and theology books, and into the real world. We are called on to show that it actually works, that it is a realistic alternative to revenge, to payback, to punishment, to anger, and to the fear that drives it all.
I want to close with a scripture reading and I hope you will hear it today with new ears. I hope you will hear it in light of the person or groups of people you struggle to love. I hope you will hear it as God’s plan for a new world, and what your role is to be in that plan! Mostly I hope you will see that lives based on bigotry, hatred, fear, and desire for payback are petty, small lives. We are called into the wide-open spaces of God’s tender mercies!
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 (MSG)
1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
2 If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.
3 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
4 Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled head,
5 Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always "me first," Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
6 Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
7 Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.
8 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit.
9 We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete.
10 But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
11 When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
12 We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
1 John 4:7-21 (NIV)
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
