“Being a Christian is Hard”
Luke 6:27-38
Someone said to me this week, “Being a Christian is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” and I would have to agree with them.
Jesus says:
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you…
…turn the other cheek…
…do not judge…
…do not condemn…
…be merciful, just as [God] is merciful.”
Raise your hand if you live by these instructions all the time.
Anyone?
Why not???
What’s gone wrong?
Was Jesus way off base?
Does He expect too much of us?
Theologian N.T. Wright says the following about these instructions from Jesus in Luke Chapter 6: “This list is all about which God you believe in—and about the way of life that follows as a result.”
And then he goes on, “We must admit with shame that large sections of Christianity down the years seem to have known little or nothing of the God Jesus was talking about.”
Wow.
I don’t know about you, but that one steps on my toes.
But, as someone has said, “that why God gave us toes—to be stepped on!”
I don’t want to think I don’t know the God Jesus is talking about!
Do you?
I mean, we are called to follow Him.
We are invited to be like Him.
But there is nothing easy about loving our enemies.
There is nothing easy about loving people who are hard on you or ministering to people who don’t like you.
There is nothing easy about the Cross!
Henri Nouwen wrote a meditation called “Our Greatest Gift.”
In it he imagines twins–a brother and a sister–talking to each other in their mother's womb:
The sister says to the brother, "I believe there is life after birth."
Her brother protests vehemently, "No, no, this is all there is.
This is a dark and cozy place, and we have nothing else to do but to cling to the cord that feeds us."
But the little girl insists, "There must be something more than this dark place.
There must be something else, a place with light where there is freedom to move."
Still, she can’t convince her twin brother.
After some silence, the sister says hesitantly, "I have something else to say, and I'm afraid you won't believe this, either, but I think there is a mother."
Her brother becomes furious. "A mother!" he shouts.
"What are you talking about?
I have never seen a mother, and neither have you.
Who put that idea in your head?
As I told you, this place is all we have.
Why do you always want more?
This is not such a bad place, after all.
We have all we need, so let's be content."
The sister is quite overwhelmed by her brother's response and for a while she doesn’t dare say anything more.
But she can’t let go of her thoughts, and since she has only her twin brother to speak to, she finally says, "Don't you feel these squeezes every once in a while?
They're quite unpleasant and sometimes even painful."
"Yes," he answers. "I feel them, and they are unpleasant.
But the pain always goes away after a while.”
"Well," the sister says, "I think that these squeezes are there to get us ready for another place, much more beautiful than this, where we will see our mother face-to-face.
Don't you think that's exciting?"
If we follow Jesus there is going to be pain and suffering, but there is also going to be birthing and light.
Ask any mother and she will tell you that birthing is a painful ordeal.
It’s painful for the mother, and it’s also got to be painful for the baby.
And the baby, well, the baby cries when she or he is born.
And the baby has to learn how to eat.
And the baby has to eventually learn how to walk.
And the baby falls down a lot and gets hurt a lot.
But eventually, the baby learns to walk.
And when the baby learns to walk—watch out!!!
Cause there are all kinds of things the baby starts trying out and a lot of these things are dangerous.
And so, the mother and father, they must keep a close eye on the baby.
They must help the baby learn and grow.
They must keep the baby safe.
And they must be patient with the baby.
And then, eventually, the baby learns to run and to read and to write and to talk and all along the way there are new dangers, new things to find out about, more mistakes to be made.
My friends, Christianity is a journey.
It is not a destination.
And I think that part of the message in what Jesus is telling us this morning is that we need to be more patient with one another.
We need to be more empathetic.
We need to help one another every chance we have.
Because God is not done with any of us yet.
I was at a continuing education event this past week in Pigeon Forge and one of the speakers, Dr. Kimberly Pope, shared this story:
Several years ago, her niece was murdered by her boyfriend.
He stabbed her 15 times with a pair of scissors during a fight over a clogged-up toilet.
When it came time for the man’s trial, Kimberly was there.
And in walks this older gentleman who looks very similar to the man who murdered her niece.
His head was shaped the same, they were about the same size and so forth, and then she realized that he is the killer’s father.
He took a seat in front of her in the courtroom.
And Kimberly was staring at this man.
And she got thinking: “What a horrible person you must be to raise a child who would take another person’s life.”
And then Kimberly said that the Holy Spirit spoke to her.
And the Holy Spirit said: “This man is created in the image of God.”
And that really got Kimberly’s attention.
And soon her whole perspective began to change.
Instead of sitting there hating this man, she began empathizing with him: “What he must be going through I can’t imagine, but it must be worse than what I am going through” she began to think.
And before she knew it she started to have a deep love for this guy.
After the trial was over and the man who killed her niece was convicted and sent to prison for life Kimberly started writing letters to him in jail.
And not only that, she started sending him soap and money and she continues to do so to this day.
And why does she do it?
Kimberly says: “Jesus died for this man to forgive his sins, and someday I want to see him in heaven.”
In John 13:34-35 Jesus says this: “A new command I give you: Love one another.
As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
It’s been said that Jesus has given the world the right to judge us.
That’s right, Jesus Christ has given the world the right to judge whether or not we are true disciples.
“They will know you are my disciples when you love like I do.”
How are you doing at that?
How am I doing?
In a world where grocery store workers hate their customers because the customers are always complaining, we are called to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us.
In a world where waitresses and waiters hate the ones they serve, we are called to bless those who curse us and pray for those who mistreat us.
In a world where the law of retribution is justified, we are called, when someone slaps us on one cheek to turn to them the other also.
And if someone takes our coat, we are supposed to give them our shirt as well!
We are to live as children of the Most High!
And the Most High is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
He is merciful.
So, Jesus says, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
Yes.
We are to be like this, because this is what God is like!
While we were yet enemies of God, Christ died for us!
This is the kind of God we have.
Jesus even prayed, from the Cross, as He bled and gasped for air, “Father forgive them…”
What are we to do with this?
It is so hard to be a Christian!
Raise your hand if you have ever read “The Hiding Place” by Corrie Ten Boom.
It’s one of my favorite books.
Corrie’s family helped hide Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Eventually, they got caught and they were all sent to a concentration camp.
Corrie was the only one in her family to survive.
And she wrote a book about it.
Corrie and her sister, Betsie, were especially close.
And they were together for much of the time in the concentration camp.
Eventually, though, Betsie lost her life.
In any event, after her ordeal, Corrie became a bit famous for what she had lived through and she was often asked to speak about it at churches and so forth.
And she would talk about God’s love and forgiveness.
On one such night, at a Church in Munich Corrie was shocked to see one of the former SS men who had stood guard at the shower room doors at the concentration camp.
He had been one of the cruel men who had mocked Corrie and Betsie and the other prisoners in the processing center.
He was the first of their actual jailers that Corrie had seen since that horrible time.
Corrie writes: “And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain blanched face.
He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. ‘How grateful I am for your message’, he said ‘To think that, as you say, Jesus has washed my sins away!’”
Corrie continues: “His hand was thrust out to shake mine.
And I, who had preached so often to the people about the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.
Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them.
Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more?”
So Corrie prayed: “forgive me and help me to forgive him.”
Corrie writes: “I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand.
I could not.
I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity.
And so again I breathed a silent prayer.
Jesus, I cannot forgive him.
Give me Your Forgiveness.”
And then she says: “As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened.
From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this man that almost overwhelmed me.
And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on God’s.
When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”
Isn’t that interesting?
Jesus says, “Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.
Then your reward will be great…”
Could it be that this great reward is who we become “in the process” of asking Jesus for His forgiveness and seeking over and over again to follow Him?
Again, it’s not a destination, but a journey.
It’s not what is, but what should be.
Now, that’s exciting!!!
