“Loving Ourselves in Order to Love Others”
“What Do You Want Me To Do For You?” – Part Two
Mark 12:28-34 ~ I John 4:9-10,19 ~ Ephesians 3:17-19
February 15, 2004
Purpose: God loves us. And when we realize that we can loving ourselves in order to love others.
Introduction –
[A bag with a stack of bricks next to it is placed at the front of the sanctuary. After a prayer over the sermon, no introduction is given. One-by-one the bricks are added to the bag as some “baggage” that people may be carrying is verbalized.]
examples
I may be too short
People don’t like my preaching
I intentionally hurt another person
Another person intentionally hurt me
I’m overweight
I’m out-of-style
[either start getting requests from the congregation or continue to give items until the bag is filled up with the bricks.]
Psychologists would call this bag, and the bricks in it, our “shadow side.” While we are prone to display what we believe others would like to see in us, this “shadow side” is what we may be hiding from others.
This is stuff that often hurts. The stuff that we’ve been told isn’t normal, or isn’t healthy to show to others. It’s the stuff we’re ashamed of. It’s the stuff that we hide, because it represents a part of ourselves that we don’t want anyone else to see.
As you might imagine, this may become a problem. While it’s healthy to carry some stuff in our shadow side and to recognize what those things are, this bag can only get so full. And as each brick is added, the bag becomes heavier and heavier, to the point when it becomes impossible to carry or pull along behind us.
[picking up the bag (with some strain) and dragging it across the pulpit area is helpful]
Last week we looked at the blind man who because of his faith, found healing.
We also heard of two disciples, James and John, who out of selfishness, didn’t get what they asked for.
And this week, we hear Jesus telling the scribe, “Love God…love one another…all the laws are summed up in these.”
In fact, I believe that Jesus did most everything, if not everything, out of love for us.
But when I read Mark 12:31 something different came to mind for me. The passage reads “You shall love your neighbor as yourself…” but what happens when I don’t love myself. What happens when my shadow side, my anger-fear-disappointment, gets so large that I cannot begin to love.
I. God loves us.
So, doing the Wesley thing, I began a search of the scriptures…and I stumbled across the familiar passage of I John 4:10, which reads…
"This is love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice
for our sins.” (for our baggage, for our shadow side)
And a few verses later in v. 19 where it says, “We love because he first loved us.”
It seems to me that if we want to unload this stuff we carry, if we truly want to “love ourselves so that we can love others,” than we need to recognize that God loves us.
Isn’t that the message of a song we let our children sing to us …“Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong. They are weak, but He is strong.”
When we accept God’s love in its truest form, we realize that it’s not us that makes the difference. But it’s God love living within us that makes us feel accepted.
In John 17:26, Jesus is quoted saying to His Father, “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
When we recognize God’s love in us…
...we can let go of the shadow stuff…
...we can forgive and be forgiven,
...we can attempt to make what was wrong, right
...we can let God’s love soothe all the hurt and pain that we’ve experienced.
...we can call this “shadow” stuff by name and either bless it if it is a good thing by reclaiming it
or dismiss it by discarding it if it is not.
God loves you.
God loves me. [have congregation say it with you several times.]
No matter what we’ve done or haven’t done.
No matter what we said or didn’t say.
No matter whom we’ve hurt…even if it is ourselves….
God still loves us..warts and all!
II. God wants us to love us.
And when we understand God’s love for us, then we can begin to look at ourselves differently.
ILUS. – There’s a story of a two-and-a-half year old who was sitting politely at the dinner table, trying his hardest to eat and talk like the grown-ups. “Please pass the salt,” he siad slowly and deliberately. It was passed. “Thank you,” he responded, and sprinkled just a little on his food. Then he blinked and said in a soft, astonished voice, “I…did that…rather…well!”
(Robert Morris’ Wrestling with Grace, p. 181)
What would happen if we stopped each day and told ourselves, when appropriate, that we did something rather well.
Now, I know, there is the flip side. The words of Romans 12:3 come ringing through, “do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought to think.”
But its my claim that we ought to think something positive of ourselves instead of nothing at all.
It’s almost as if we can rewrite the golden rule to read, “Do unto ourselves as we think it should be done to others.” In fact Robert Morris wrote in his book entitled “Wrestling with Grace” that “Jesus’ invitation to “love your neighbor as yourself” implies that we cultivate the same pleasurable response to the good aspects of ourselves that we would in any other person. In doing so, we are actually loving God, because the good quality we love is a reflection of God himself in us.” (p.182)
When we carry God’s love with us, there are times when we can say, “With God’s help, I did that rather well.”
We can love ourselves because God loves us.
III. Loving Others
I believe it’s only then we can truly love others.
When we’ve put things in the proper perspective, we can see the enormous amount of love God has to share with the world.
Ephesians 3:17 says, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together will all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ…”
And in that same book, chapter 5, verses 1-2, “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ has loved us and given Himself for us…”
One last story…
There was a young child who loved to draw. But as he grew, his family discouraged him from doing so because they felt there was no living to be made drawing pictures. So he put drawing into his “shadow” bag and carried it over four decades.
Just after his 50th birthday, his wrists began to hurt. A dull aching pain at first, it became worse and worse as time when on. Doctors tried to diagnose it, but they couldn’t say for sure. A surgery was scheduled to go in and find the problem.
A week before the surgery that man began to think about his life, going year by year, looking through some old stuff. And then he came across a scribble he had drawn as a child.
Almost instinctively, he picked up a pencil and paper and began drawing. He was up all night drawing one picture after another until there wasn’t a piece of paper in the house that didn’t have a doodle or a picture on it, and sure enough the pain had left his wrists. And as long as he drew the pain did not return.
[go back to the bag]
What’s in your bag this morning?
Bless it or discard it…God loves you, so you can love yourself, you can love others.
Bless it or discard it…God loves you, so you can love yourself, you can love others.
Bless it or discard it…God loves you, so you can love yourself, you can love others.
Bless it or discard it…God loves you, so you can love yourself, you can love others.
Bless it or discard it…Bless it or discard it…Bless it or discard it…
[have the congregation join in until the bag is empty. Then throw the bag into the air and let it fall…]
Jesus said that he came so that we might have life and have it more abundantly.
God loves us, so that we can love others, in order to love others.
And the church says...AMEN!
Will you join me in prayer?
Heavenly Father,
No one knows what we’ve been through. No one knows the hurts and the scars that we carry. No one knows all the disappointments we’ve face. No one knows but you.
This morning, please help us. Help us to have the strength to reach into our past and begin to bless or discard those things that hinder us.
We know that you love us. We know that you want us to experience love ourselves. We know that you want us to share this love with others. Help us to do so. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.
Closing Song - #520 – Nobody Knows The Trouble I See
Benediction
Grant us, O Lord, that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,
and that what we believe in our hearts, we may practice in our lives;
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Note: If for any reason you did not find this sermon helpful or would like to make a comment or ask a question, please feel free to contact me at gb@clergy.net. Your input will help me personally and my congregation as I learn Spiritually and professionally.
