Love In Overalls
(Message #12 of the Series: View From God’s Mountaintop)
Matthew 5.1and John 13.34-35 October 22, 2000
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This morning we connect two texts. The first is the prologue to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain:
and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
Jesus taught so many of life’s great principles, and kingdom living. It was really a mountainous sermon:
The Sacredness of Marriage
Keeping our Language Pure
Peace
Serving
Loving
Giving
Prayer and Fasting
The Dangers of Materialism
The Providence of God
The Trap of Judging Others
The Golden Rule
Bearing Spiritual Fruit
Three chapters (Mt 5-7) which take only twenty minutes to read, yet entirely covering more topics than I could preach in a month. Small wonder it has been called the greatest sermon ever preached.
At the end of the preaching event, Jesus then spent the next few years living the sermon (a practice we all could adopt). His life is without question the greatest life ever lived. And herein is the connection with John 13:
34A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another;
as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
35By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples,
if ye have love one to another.
There are two childhood memories that I connect with my understanding of this text. The first is of my Uncle Marlen. He has been gone some years now. When we were kids, all the boys of the family would gather for football. Uncle Marlen was always right in the middle of us. He was a gifted athlete. My uncle was always the quarterback – he could throw the ball into the next time zone! Whenever I could I made sure I was on his team. He would gather us together and say, You go this way when the ball is hiked. Turn left just past the old Ford near that tree. Run like the wind – I’ll throw y’the ball – Catch? “Catch” was Uncle Marlen’s way of finding out if we had the plan down pat.
The second memory is when I was much younger, and didn’t catch. My mother wanted me to put on my fall jacket. It had a zipper – a contraption I hadn’t yet mastered. Mom offered help, but, at four years old I knew what was best; I could do anything! After an eternity of trying to get the east and west ends of that zipper to meet, I finally cried out in agony, Okay! Okay already – you close it, I yip it!
Jesus had preached the sermon, then lived the sermon – and then he said to the disciples – It’s your turn – you do it! YOU live the sermon now. “Catch”
The Mountain Sermon of Jesus, and the ability of Jesus’ disciples (to this very day) to catch it, are much like my childhood frustration. We have read it a thousand times – even seen it demonstrated. And just like I had seen the zipper worked so many times, but couldn’t quite do the trick myself – so we miss catching when Jesus says, Love one another.
My attempts fall short. I find myself not loving like Jesus loved me. Psychologist James Dobson reports seeing a sign on a convent in southern California reading: Absolutely No Trespassing--Violators Will Be Prosecuted to the Full Extent of the Law. Signed, "The Sisters of Mercy."1
A few years back Pepper Rodgers was in the middle of a terrible season as football coach at UCLA. It even got so bad that it upset his home life. He recalls, My dog was my only friend. I told my wife that a man needs at least two friends and she bought me another dog.2
What is wrong with our attempts to follow the Master, and love as He loved? It is our incomplete understanding of what love is, and how it works.
Bible teacher and scholar Haddon Robinson writes,
When I was a kid in Sunday School….I could see absolutely no relationship between loving God and loving my brother or my neighbor….In the Scriptures, Christian love is not objective. Christian love is subjective. Christian love does not reside in the personality being loved. It resides in the person doing the loving. My basic premise was wrong; it is not such a simple thing to love God.3
Subjective! Did you catch? So often we connect love with the point that we are supposed to feel good. In essence, the characteristic we miss entirely is that love flows toward the object!
Let me demonstrate. In the sentence I love you, the word “you” is the object. “I” is the subject. The object receives the action of the verb love. If the statement is true (I love you), then all of the action and intent of my loving will be received by you. Love is subjective, not objective. And, as Haddon Robinson suggests, it ain’t easy! In fact it is scary, uncomfortable, and can wear you out to direct your energy towards others.
The point is, that’s just what Jesus said his disciples are to do! (Just) as I have loved you…now it’s your turn!
If you opt for that – living life as a lover – the question is then begged; how do I do it? The answer flows from applying love like you put on the overalls to go to do the hard work. Let’s look at the love Jesus talked about in His mountain sermon, Love in Overalls…
If you’re going to love like Jesus loved you will have to
See Our World as an I.C.U.
In One Church from the Fence, Wes Seelinger writes:
I have spent long hours in the intensive care waiting room ... watching with anguished people ... listening to urgent questions: Will my husband make it? Will my child walk again? How do you live without your companion of thirty years?
The intensive care waiting room is different from any other place in the world. And the people who wait are different. They can't do enough for each other. No one is rude. The distinctions of race and class melt away. A person is a father first, a black man second. The garbage man loves his wife as much as the university professor loves his, and everyone understands this. Each person pulls for everyone else.
In the intensive care waiting room, the world changes. Vanity and pretense vanish. The universe is focused on the doctor's next report. If only it will show improvement. Everyone knows that loving someone else is what life is all about.4
Seeing our world as an “ICU” means understanding that we are all in the same sinking boat. What makes an ICU waiting room so different is the vividness of our own mortality. People in ICU are those closest to coding, checking-out! There is little margin to worry about profit margin in an ICU!
Seeing our world, the people who inhabit this earth, as close to code-terminal is the one practice that changes everything. We forgive much that goes on when people are frantically grasping for meaning and relief of the stress as they tough it out in the waiting room. That’s called patience.
So should be our perspective regarding others we meet in our daily life. It is a dark world. It is a scary world, and people are grasping for meaning, and some kind of comfort. Christ has the answer – You go do it now – You love as I have loved you! Catch?
If you’re going to love like Jesus loved you will have to
Determine to Love Subjectively
Love subjectively is really putting two words together unnecessarily! Loving must be subjective – or it is not love. But there is a determination about loving that can’t be ignored. It means you must choose to love others; and that without regard to the circumstances – or the loveliness of the object.
On April 6, 2000, Ricky and Toni Sexton were taken hostage inside their Wytheville, Virginia, home by a fugitive couple on a crime spree. Toni had taken her poodle outside when Dennis Lewis, 37, and Angela Tanner, 20, roared into her driveway, pointed pistols at her, and yelled at her to get back inside the house.
Inside the house, the Sextons turned their hostage experience into an opportunity to demonstrate Christian love. The Sextons listened to their captors' troubles, fed them, showed them gospel videos, read to them from the Bible, and prayed and cried with them.
During negotiations with the police, Ricky Sexton refused his own release when Lewis and Tanner suggested that they might end the standoff by committing suicide. The standoff had an unusual ending. Before surrendering to the police, Angela Tanner left $135 and a note for the Sextons that read: Thank you for your hospitality. We really appreciate it. I hope he gets better. Wish all luck & love. Please accept this. It really is all we have to offer. Love, Angela and Dennis.5
The Sextons chose to love – they were intentional, subjective. They loved like Jesus loved us first.
32For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye?
for sinners also love those that love them.
33And if ye do good to them which do good to you,
what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.
34And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive,
what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners,
to receive as much again.
35But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend,
hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great,
and ye shall be the children of the Highest:
for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
36Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
Luke 6:32-36
And, then…
If you’re going to love like Jesus loved you will have to Find a Way
I admit it; I am not very resourceful. And there are times when there are people who “irk” me. I find them quite “unlovable”. Yet, Jesus – who I’m certain didn’t find much loveable in me – died for me on a cross. He found a way.
How are you doing with finding a way to love?
In Witnesses of a Third Way: A Fresh Look at Evangelism, Robert Neff's chapter includes this story about visiting a church service:
It was one of those mornings when the tenor didn't get out of bed on the right side. ... As I listened to his faltering voice, I looked around. People were pulling out hymnals to locate the hymn being sung by the soloist.
By the second verse, the congregation had joined the soloist in the hymn. And by the third verse, the tenor was beginning to find the range.
And by the fourth verse, it was beautiful.
And on the fifth verse the congregation was absolutely silent, and the tenor sang the most beautiful solo of his life.
That is life in the body of Christ, enabling one another to sing the tune Christ has given us.6
It’s a hard thing to love as Jesus loved us. After all, it’s not just singing so the tenor won’t be off key. Jesus died for us. Even though the chances are relatively small that you will be called to physically die for others, the forecast about dying to self is altogether different if you’re going to find a way to put your love in overalls. It means all those attitudes about
Black people
Lazy people
Smelly people
Loud people
Sneaky people
Snobby people
…it all has to go under the determination to love like Jesus loved us.
It means those very people are the ones who need to receive your love the most. And you will choose to love them…because it’s an I.C.U. out there!
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Footnotes:
1. James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 1988), 107.
2. Ibid, 227.
3. Haddon Robinson, A Case Study of a Mugging, Preaching Today, 102.
4. Hugh Duncan, Boise, Idaho. Leadership, Vol 16, no.1.
5. The Roanoke Times (4-8-00), p.A-1 c.2000Preaching Today.com
6. John H. Unger, Brandon, Manitoba, Leadership, Vol.11, no.4
