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Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's May 7, 2006 Sunday worship service. Determined to Love I John 3:16-24 Bethel 5/7/06 Rev. Marc Sherrod, ThD Time and time again, the scriptures enjoin us to love one another. So it is in this text from I John. Elsewhere in scripture, we are commanded to love our enemies. Beyond the “one another” we are to love, our best friends and family and fellow church members, we are commanded, it would seem, to love even those who misuse us. Perhaps, we all should try an experiment in love, we who are trying to be obedient to Jesus. Let’s think of our enemies, those who have wronged us in the past. And let’s try to presuppose the possibility of love. Picture the ones who have hurt us. The one who blocked a job promotion you wanted; the one who took advantage of your generosity in some business dealing; the person whose words opened a wound that still won’t heal; the symbolic head of a particular system that thwarted our freedom or happiness. We had a neighbor for a couple of years in Massachusetts who, recently divorced, had moved in with his girlfriend into the downstairs condominium of this large, two family house where we lived. While we had separate entrances and lots of space for both owners, the fact is, sharing a big house had its challenges, especially when you are the ones with young children upstairs and the folks below are trying to escape family life and responsibilities (i.e. the noises children make). While I can honestly say that we did our best to be quiet and respectful and cordial, they let us know that nothing was ever satisfactory, and we felt bullied and on edge any time our paths crossed. I knew, deep down, that this was no way to live with your neighbor, but my seething anger at their lack of civility slowly eclipsed any commitment to make things better. In that situation, lots of subtle tensions and innuendo caused the wounds to fester, until finally, much to our relief and no doubt to theirs as well, they found a home elsewhere. But that daily anxiety and sense of foreboding if your paths crossed on the front porch or sidewalk was enough to leave you with a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach much of the time. Whoever they are, to think about them, to see their faces, to ponder their injustices directed toward us, can open up painful memories. Chance are, many of us keep a metaphorical dart board close by with certain faces of our enemies in the bull’s eye. And so, I wonder, how in the world can the words flow so easily from the First Letter of John: “love one another.”? Now, I can conceive of the possibility that the scriptures might enjoin us to, “learn to live with each other, despite your differences,” or “Let bygones be bygones. You have got to go on; you can’t nurture your hurt and resentment forever.” But the scriptures say considerably more than that. Love one another. It is in the imperative; it is a command, not an option. Truth is, we sometimes get more out of our resentments than we care to admit. There is something about us that enjoys resurrecting old hurts. We talk about them to other people. We reiterate the specific ways in which they offended us. We love our furies. But when you choose to love someone, you tend to think the best of them, and you tend to idealize their personality. In so doing, their weaknesses and foibles will grow small, even as their virtues grow large. This compels us to look for mitigating circumstances, to devise strategies whereby we earnestly attempt to see the person in the very best light. Perhaps we begin to wonder, “What was going on in his or her life that made them need to use me in this way? Or “I have certain ways about me that might antagonize others. I wonder if I unintentionally antagonized him? Or, “I have gotten lots of good breaks in my life. I wonder what bad breaks she got that have led her to view me in this way?” Once a war begins, we are generally free to demonize our enemies. After all, we think, our enemies have wronged us and we have gone to war to try and set things right. In war, we believe that all moral bets are off. We are free to view our enemies in the most negative light possible, once the shooting starts. Anyone who has studied the history of war knows that psychological warfare can be just as important as the war fought with actual weapons. Perhaps we think the same kind of psychological warfare, demonizing our enemies, applies in our broken relationships with others, that somehow, in our self-righteousness, we can turn our opponents into the “bad guy,” turn them into subhuman creatures. But First John tells us something quite different: love one another. This means that when we are wronged, all moral bets are definitely not called off. In fact, according to this ethic, it is precisely when we are used spitefully and wrongfully that the true moral test begins. This love ethic in I John or as we find it in more familiar passages such as Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount where Jesus talks about loving enemies and praying for persecutors, this is really what made the early days of the Christian movement so revolutionary in and for its time and eventually aroused the anger of the Powers that be. The Christian faith makes the stunning moral demand that we love our enemies, to presuppose the best about them, to see their lives lovingly and with charity, to be determined to love them, no matter what. How is such super-human effort possible? Christian love is not natural. It is not something we are born with. It is something that comes to us as a gift through Christ. Most of us may think of love as a feeling, but love is also a decision and a commitment. Or, as Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.” “Love one another, just as Jesus has commanded us.” Amen.
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