· Acts 10:44-48
· Psalm 98 (4)
· 1 John 5:1-6
· John 15:9-17
Imagine. It's a beautiful sunny afternoon in late May. We often get snow this time of year, but today it's warm and sunny, light southerly breeze, birds singing, plants sprouting. I have the picture window wide open. My brand new flowerbeds are seeded and ready to sprout. My priceless, unique, irreplaceable baobab, sacred to the memory of a dear friend, is sitting out on the balcony for the first time. The dog is sleeping peacefully in the sun. I've just read this beautiful gospel and I'm about to write a sermon about loving my neighbour.
Just then, the guy who's been doing renos two floors up starts dumping all the sanding dust over the balcony. It lands everywhere: my flowerbed, my food crops getting ready to bed out, my baobab, my piano, my dog, everything to within about three feet of the window.
What the f.........!!!!!!!
I storm upstairs and into the apartment. The guy, who was never the sharpest knife anyway, and further dilapidated his brain with some strange experiments in chemical abuse as a teenager, has got the whole apartment drop-clothed and is wearing an N95 respirator, but he's also got the door open, the window open, and he's heaving more dust over the balcony. So not only is it in everyone's apartments below, it's also all over the hallway. This is drywall dust, so it's got silica in it. Breathing in silica dust causes silicosis. Hence the mask. So he knows it's bad for you, but he's still dumping it over the balcony. And he's probably aware of being a huge douchebag, because he starts yelling rudeness at me before I can even open my mouth. Opening my mouth isn't useful anyway since he's deaf. I make my point clear nonetheless. He carries on nonetheless.
WHAT THE F.........!!!!!!!
Yeah, you're not supposed to swear in a sermon, I suppose. But some people are just douchebags. So it took the best part of an hour to look for the landlord and not find him, since he can never be found anyway, leave a message, and clean up the mess.
So then I sit down again to write my sermon, and all I can think is if God wanted me to love my neighbour, he wouldn't have created such f'ing morons.
I asked myself, "what would Jesus do?" Well I figure, silicosis is the oldest occupational disease known to man, and Jesus was a carpenter and wouldn't have thrown things off the edge when working at heights, because no self-respecting carpenter is dumb enough to do that. So I think if the guy did that on Jesus's site, he'd have got the mother of all earfuls. What would Jesus do? Jesus would have sent his arse home for the day, if not for good.
And you know what, Jesus got angry. At the scribes and Pharisees. At the moneychangers in the Temple. At a fig tree. Jesus did not like douchebaggery any more than I do, I'm pretty sure of that.
So what's the difference between Jesus withering a fig tree, and me being spitting mad at some slovenly worker who's wilfully polluting my apartment with hazardous materials?
How does Jesus get over it? How long does it take Jesus to get over it? You know, it's one thing to say, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they're doing." But this guy knew exactly what he was doing. He was tossing hazardous waste to the wind so it got into all the apartments below. And he kept on doing it after being told. That's just perverse. It's not following orders, it's not inadvertent, it's not accidental, it's deliberately, perversely doing what's wrong, knowing that it's wrong. Like the moneychangers in the Temple.
It doesn't say, really, how Jesus dealt with douchebags. He certainly tells them what he thinks of them. But how does he reconcile being angry and fed up with them, and loving them? It doesn't tell us. I guess that's one of the great mysteries of the Bible.
So I decided to back up my hard drive and go do something else. For about six hours, I did something else than my sermon. And I kept being mad. The whole day, it spoiled my mood. But then I wanted to write this sermon before bed, so I sat down again. And I read some psalms. About five of them. And then, I felt better. The guy is still a douchebag, but I can fill my mind with praise for the Lord until there is no room to worry over his douchebaggery.
Does that count as forgiveness? Does that count as loving my neighbour? Close enough, I hope. But it's lucky for me that I'm saved by grace through faith, because if I really had to love my douchebag neighbours, I'd just go straight to Hell.
Praise be to God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.
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