Kingdom Politics - Part 2: God is Love
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Matthew 22:34-40
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Matthew 22:36-40
In my lifetime I have never seen our nation as polarized as it is today. No matter how much we might try to walk a middle line, people are watching to see when we will lean too far left or right on any given issue and therefore become an enemy. It's amazing how quickly this escalates. I've seen pastors lose their jobs for standing with black colleagues, other pastors, to provide support at peaceful protests. I've personally been accused of not believing the Bible and not being a Christian for choosing to wear a mask to protect others and do my part to slow the spread of COVID. A man in one church told me that he could not respect me as a leader because I chose not to own a gun, which to him implied that I did not love my family enough to protect them.
Yes, these are extreme scenarios, but tragically such partisan setups are becoming more and more common. On social media and even in the news, we regularly see and hear inflammatory labels like "baby-killers" or "spawns of Satan" to describe political opponents. We see derogatory language and insults becoming the norm to describe anyone who disagrees with us. We escalate conflicts by refusing to acknowledge the complicated nature of so many controversial issues and we define people or box them into absurd and extreme stereotypes based on race, gender, opinions on various issues, and any other identifier we can think of to separate "them" from "us." If you support police, for example, you must hate black people. If you support black people who have been harmed and even killed as a result of racist individuals and unjust systems, you must hate the police. There is no middle ground.
When I was a child, if I spoke about another person the way we see national leaders talking today, no matter what I thought about them or how mean they were, I would have swallowed so much soap I would still be blowing bubbles today. Ironically, washing my mouth out with soap, which is what happened for example when I made fun of a girl's glasses in first grade, was considered soft by my grandparent's generation who would have preferred I go and cut my own switch. I'm not saying we need to go back to the days of beating our children, but I do think it's tragic that we can't allow our daughter to watch a presidential debate because the yelling and fighting scares her and because we don't want her to pick up on the habit of interrupting and screaming over each other to be heard at all cost.
So what does all this have to do with Jesus?
After the religious leaders realized that Jesus had stumped every one of their opposing groups, a legal expert poses one final question. What is the greatest commandment?
Essentially that is the question we are still arguing today. We are destroying each other, even in the church, over laws and policies and judicial rulings on everything from abortion to the environment to education to immigration to marriage to guns to healthcare and the list goes on and on. But in all of our fighting, nobody is listening. All we care about is that the laws of Caesar's Kingdom align with our personal beliefs, no matter how those laws might affect people who do not share our beliefs or who do not have the same opportunities and privilege we have.
That is why Jesus' answer is so crucial for us"
LOVE GOD... LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR... PERIOD.
It's really that simple...
...or is it?
In truth, loving others, especially our enemies, has become one of the most controversial things to preach these days. When the rubber meets the road, we're always looking for a loophole. In order to love as Jesus commands, we must learn to see in "the other" the face of Christ. Jaime Soles, a New Testament professor at Southern Methodist University, says that "until we treat one another as friends, as those who have faces, we will stand polarized and unable, unwilling to compromise and devise solutions, preferring to blame and complain instead." John Howard Yoder tells a story of his time in India...
When I was in India, I was fascinated by the Hindu worship practices--called puja. They have images of their gods posted everywhere: near their front doors, in their shops, and even on the dashboards of their cars. In their chapels they have these little figures that portray their gods, all elaborately decorated--majestic and beautiful. As an act of worship, during their times of prayer, they place offerings of flowers and spices, and sometimes even coins, in front of the images of their gods.
What Hindu worship should remind us Christians is that we are called to see the image of our God in the faces of the people around us, people created by God in God's image. What if, out of devotion to our God, we were to present our offerings before those in whom we are expected to find the divine image? What if giving to God what is God's included rethinking how to respond to our enemies?
What if, instead of just merely refusing to participate in violence against our enemies, we also took this as a call to bless them by presenting our offerings to God before them--as if we really believed that in them was the presence of God's image?"
How will you respond to the greatest commandment?
It is not enough to say we love God. It is not even enough to say we love others or that we are a "loving church"? Love is a verb. Love requires intentional action. Love is not simply the passive choice not to do harm, but it also requires the active choice to do all the good we can. Love... it seems so simple, but is it really?
Perhaps this commandment is so significant because the process of learning to fulfill it truly takes a lifetime. Are we willing to set our own interests and opinions aside to truly listen to someone else? Are we willing to hear their experience and their needs without judgement? Are we willing to put them first, even if it means we might lose something for ourselves?
For Jesus, love meant laying down his life, even for his enemies? This week, what is love requiring you to lay down?
Listen to this week’s sermon here:
Video of the complete worship service available at http://asburyumc-huntersville.com/live