John 13:31-35
“What’s Love Got To Do With It?”
Over this past week we have seen photographs on the front pages of our newspapers and on our television screens of the type—well, that I have never seen before.
But then, now that I think of it. I have seen pictures from the concentration camps—during World War II…
…but for someone my age—that’s ancient history…
…I wasn’t even thinking about being born yet.
We’ve learned from that. We aren’t like that anymore.
And of course, the Americans weren’t the ones performing the evil, brutal acts against their fellow human beings…it was those darn Germans!!!
So, this hits much closer to home.
An article on the front page of
Yesterday’s paper particularly caught my eye.
According to the story, “People who study the origins of group violence say the image of two American soldiers smiling proudly over naked Iraqi soldiers represents the worst side of human nature.
‘But it is human nature,’” says one of the experts cited in the article.
And I would have to agree. It is human nature…at it’s worst.
One quote from the article was especially disturbing:
“I would put it more in terms of opportunity,” a sociologist and prison researcher says.
“Really what you have to explain is not so much the aberrant psychology…but the fact that they had the opportunity to act on these impulses.”
Does this mean that any of us…given the right circumstances are just as likely to act the way the American soldiers at this Iraqi prison did?
I’m afraid so…
…except for one factor…
…one factor that gives us the strength, the insight, the compassion, and the power not to succumb to the mob mentality…
…and that one factor is Jesus Christ living inside of us as Lord and Savior!!!
I remember, after having been recently converted, I was out with some old friends at some of the old haunts.
It was late at night and I was with a group of young white males, when along come two young black males.
This group that I was with began to taunt these two black males with racial slurs and threats of violence.
This is when I most understood that the Holy Spirit now living inside me made it impossible for me to be a part of this group of people any longer---at least I could not go out with them at night and be part of them.
Not that this group had ever appeared to be the least bit racist in the past…there aren’t even hardly any black people in Syracuse, New York…
…but this group had been hateful and mean to many other people in the past.
I asked a friend of mine to drive me home.
He was having too much fun, so I had to stay.
I was able to walk over to the two young men.
I smiled at them.
They weren’t so sure what to make of me. I’m sure they thought I was making fun of them at first.
Then I told them not to pay any attention to the other guys.
I told them I was sorry they were having to deal with this.
And you know what one of them said to me?
He said, “You’re different. You’re not like them. You don’t belong with them.”
“God bless you,” I said and then I thought about what they had said.
This really was the beginning of a new chapter in my life. A real moment of enlightenment.
No, I wasn’t like them.
I didn’t belong with them…
…but I used to be like them.
The only thing that made me different, the only thing that made my attitude different—was that Jesus Christ had become Lord of my life—I had been born again!
I have the same human nature.
The late Harry Denman was once asked by a young person, “What is the new birth?”
Denman replied: “When you are born a person you have a physical birth and you love as a person loves which can be very, very selfish at times.
When you are born of the Lord you have a spiritual birth and you love as God loves.
That is what we call redemptive love.
That is what Jesus did, He lived a redemptive life.
He gave Himself.”
“As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”—Jesus tells us in our Scripture Lesson for this morning.
Perhaps more than any other single verse in the New Testament, this one should cause us to get up out of our pews, run out of the church doors, and never come back!
Just before He died and just after He washed feet, Jesus gave a “new command” to a community in crisis.
“Love one another,” He said.
Now on one level, that’s no sweat. Think nice thoughts, do an occasional good deed, and center your life around the tenets of Hallmark.
We know how to do that because we are generally pretty nice people, right?
But wait a minute.
Jesus doesn’t stop there.
He also says, “As I have loved you,”.
Most of us are pretty good in the love department and think it’s a pretty good idea.
But Jesus doesn’t say to love any old way. But rather His Way—Just like He did.
Just like a Cross.
We can die loving His way.
Loving His way is not safe.
But that’s His command…
…and it’s a non-negotiable command for those who choose to follow.
Jesus had lots of choices.
Look how He made them.
He chose persons over property.
He chose God instead of self.
He came to minister instead of having others minister to Him.
He took a towel and a basin.
He took a child instead of a rich young ruler.
Of course He loved the rich young ruler, but the rich young ruler loved self.
He sought the unsought.
He loved the unlovely.
He wanted the unwanted.
He came not to judge but to save.
Jesus came to make love known, and when He left the earth in the flesh He sent the Holy Spirit to give us power to love all persons.
Are we using this power?
Tina Turner has a song which came out several years ago called “What’s love Got To Do With It”…
“What’s love got to do, got to do with it
What’s love but a second hand emotion
What’s love but a sweet old fashioned notion”
Love may not have anything to do with the often mean and selfish world,
but when it comes to Jesus Christ, and being one of His followers—love has everything to do with it!!!
One night last year around the 4th of July I was walking out in the church parking lot form the house to the church.
Two little black boys were playing basketball, and they came running up to me.
“Are there racist people in this neighborhood?” they asked.
They looked frightened, and I was concerned.
“No, I don’t think so,” I replied, “Why do you ask?”
“We keep hearing loud booms and bangs. It sounds like guns.”
I stood outside with them for a few moments on that warm summer night—until I heard the booms and the bangs myself.
“Oh, those are just fireworks,” I reassured them.
“You know, the things people light around the fourth of July. There’s nothing to worry about.”
It sure troubled me to think that these kids—they couldn’t have been older than nine or ten—had already learned enough about human nature to be afraid of the evil that their fellow humans have the capacity to do them.
We are immersed in a culture that has largely given up on God, and our credibility as Christians is based on our ability to be and produce disciples who love as Jesus loved.
Now don’t get me wrong here.
The racial issue and hatred is not restricted to one set of persons alone.
I regularly…well, not regularly, but when I have the chance, I go over to a middle school on Todd’s Lane to play basketball.
There is usually a fairly large group of pretty good players over there, so one does not have to worry about having no one to play with.
For the most part, the other fellows who play over there are very kind and courteous to each other—unusually so for the most part.
Now you have to understand that there are usually twenty or thirty adult males over there every time I play, and I am the only adult male who is white.
Occasionally, there will be a heckler or two who will start calling me “whitey” or referring to me as “Larry Bird”, and this can be a bit intimidating.
It also hurts, but it gives me the opportunity to feel what it is like to walk in the shoes of those who have been dealing with this type of thing for hundreds of years.
Jesus says that the only way others will know we are disciples is to the extent that His love has a place in all we say and do.
“By this,” he says, “others will know.”
This means knowing intimately the teachings of Jesus and taking them on the road!
It means living Jesus’ way in a culture that wants to kill Him again.
It means loving not when we feel like it or on our own terms, but as He did, in all things.
So here we have it.
Jesus Christ lays down what He wishes to be the distinguishing mark of His people—“As I have loved, so you must love one another.”
A great Methodist evangelist once said: “Love has to be seen….If people do not see the love of Christ in us, I am not sure that we are followers of Christ. I am not sure we know Him….”
Do we know Him?
In Matthew chapter 7 Jesus makes this statement: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
Does our faith cause us to proclaim with the apostle Paul: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”?
Do we allow the evil spirit of discrimination taint who we reach out to or do we strive to see every person as one Whom Christ loves, and every sinner in the light of who he or she might become?
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Movement, wrote about and preached about and lived love.
“The more we are filled with the life of God, the more tenderly we will be concerned for those who remain without God in the world, still dead in trespasses and sins.” wrote Wesley, “This concern for others will not lose its reward.”
Sin is selfishness, which is the opposite of love…
…which is the opposite of what we are called to do and to be.
Are we being crucified with Christ?
Are we moving closer and closer to loving like He does each and every day?
This is our task. This is the journey that all who call themselves Christian must be on.
If we find ourselves not loving another, we must go out of our way to make sure we learn to love them.
According to Wesley: Love desires “nothing other than the salvation of” other people’s “souls.”
Harry Denman is quoted as saying:
Today the only way one can see love is to see it wrapped up in a person…The only way to see Christ is to see Him wrapped in a person…We need to become a package of love, a package of Christ.”
Are we packages of Christ?
What better gift can we give the world?
And it doesn’t cost us a dime!
Although it might…and it might even cost us our lives…it will definitely cost us our natural sinful, selfish natures—but the reward in this life and in the next is more than worth it!
So instead of running away…running from our pews and out the doors of the church when confronted with this command of Christ—let’s embrace it—let’s become it!
A colleague tells of a time the phone rang.
It was a friend whose daughter had been murdered in a nearby state—incredibly painful and tragic.
On a hike, this friend told my colleague that he eventually wanted to visit his daughter’s murderer.
Well, that day arrived.
That’s why he was calling.
He and his wife had been to the sentencing.
“You know,” said the man to my colleague, “we talked to him and offered him our forgiveness.”
There was silence for a while.
Somehow my colleague wasn’t expecting this.
“And you know,” he went on, “it looks like we’ll be visiting him from time to time. We went down there thinking there would be some closure to the trip, an end to all this pain, and here it seems God is opening up a new chapter in our lives.”
A long time ago, as He hung on the Cross, Jesus the Lamb of God prayed for the very people who were killing Him.
“Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Love one another,” He said.
Just like that.
Let us pray: Almighty God, only You can enable us to obey Your command. Open our hearts, and may we receive your gift of Loving. In Jesus’ name and for His sake we pray. Amen.
