· Acts 8:26-40
· Psalm 22:25-31 (27)
· 1 John 4:7-21
· John 15:1-8
This letter of John's is maybe the hardest reading in the New Testament. "Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers and sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also."
Well, to be honest, I don't say I [SQG] "love" God. I don't think I've ever said that. Like John said, I've never even met the guy. I know the writings, I know how I perceive God in my life and in my heart, but I can't say exactly that I [SQG] "know" God, as a person. It's like the late Jack Layton, former leader of the NDP. Actually, I did meet Jack Layton once. I have a photo of me and Jack. He was a great leader to our party. But I never had lunch with Jack. I never had a personal conversation with him. I respected him as a leader, but I can't say I ever knew the man, really. Same with God. I respect God. I accept him as a leader. But do I know God personally? Have I played a round of golf with God? Is God my friend on Facebook? No.
So I don't say I love God. It would be more accurate to say that I seek the Lord.
So what about my neighbour? Someone told me a while back "the love of God shines through you." Well that's very kind of her. Clearly I'm doing a good job of hiding the sad fact that I don't even like my neighbour. My neighbours make noise. They smoke tobacco, weed and crack, and I can barely breathe in my own apartment. They litter. They idle their vehicles for hours even when it's warm. They're shoddy workers and dishonest employers. They're ignorant and inconsiderate. They make too many demands on my time. They're bad parents. And what I hate the most is, they're so very, very stupid. Like George Carlin said, if you think about how stupid the average person is, you have to realise that half of them are even stupider than that. And I can't stand stupid people.
But hey, apparently I'm doing a good job of hiding it, at least as long as I don't get into a political debate. Still, I always wonder. I seek the Lord, I serve him, but so help me, I just don't like people. So does that mean that the Spirit does not abide in me? Am I really one of the goats? Am I doomed to the utter darkness?
I think not. Well, at least I won't be in the outer darkness, because I'm saved. That's one thing I love about being a Lutheran: explaining to my non-Lutheran friends that God is not gonna smite me, because I'm saved, by grace, through faith. Thank you Lord for that, because I sure wouldn't get saved on my own merit, especially if I have to like my neighbour.
But the other comforting thought is that I'm not the only one. Not by a long shot. Martin Luther King himself, who seemed like a pretty fine upstanding Christian, said it's lucky for us God didn't ask us to like our neighbours. So I guess Martin Luther King had the same problem I do with liking people.
Now you might say, how can you love your neighbours if you don't even like them? Well, it's actually quite simple. In our modern society, we're misunderstanding love. We think those who love us are the people who make us [SQG] "feel good about ourselves." That's a very useless concept, if you think about it, but we don't really have time to think about it in this sermon. What we can think about though, is that nowhere in the Bible does it say we need to [SQG] "feel good about ourselves." It's really not one of the ideals that God has for us.
What does the Bible tell us about love? Hundreds of things. If you actually read the book, there is more of God's love than God's anger. And Saint Paul summarized the whole thing in 1 Corinthians 13.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
So, by the grace of God, we know that love is not defined by what we feel, but what we do. You may have heard parents say about their children, "I love him, but I don't really like him." In fact, you might say the greatest love is that we show the people we don't like. It's easy to do things for someone you like. Why wouldn't you do something for them? They're your friends. You like them. Maybe you actually know you like them by the fact that you willingly do things for them. When you start getting fed up with doing things for them, you start to notice you don't like them as much. They're too demanding. They're inconsiderate. They don't do anything back for you. You don't like them very much after all.
Doing something for someone you don't like is much harder. If my neighbour needs his car boosted, I'll boost his car. But if it's the neighbour who's always trying to cause me trouble, then I don't want to boost her car. I don't like her. Plus she's trying to do me harm, so why would I help her? But that's exactly whose car I should be boosting. That's the one that the Lord cares about. The Lord knows I'll boost a hundred cars if I have to. What he wants to see is whether I'll boost the car of the person who's trying to do me harm. Because that is love.
Now I might do it because I seek the Lord. Because I know the Lord wants me to do it. If I do it for the Lord, can I still say I am showing my neighbour love by boosting her car? Well, maybe not. But then again, didn't the Lord tell us, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." (Matthew 25:40) So does it really matter, whether I do it for the Lord, or because I genuinely like my neighbour as a person?
Remember the greatest commandment:
"The first (commandment) is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' These is no other commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:29-31)
So if you don't like your neighbour, serve them as you would serve Jesus Christ himself, with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength, for the love you bear the Lord, or at least for the love the Lord bears you.
And if you can't serve your neighbour even for the love of God, well, then thank God Almighty that even so you are saved, by grace, through faith.
Praise be to God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.
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