Targeted Love

 Read Luke 6:27-28

He is not here. He is risen.

He has gone ahead of you to Galilee.

Tell the disciples and Peter to meet me in Galilee.

Why do you look for the living among the dead.

He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today!

Up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph over his foes.

He arose the victor over the dark domain and he lives forever with his saints to reign.

A week ago, many of you arose early for a sunrise service. We couldn’t wait. We were excited, plus there was breakfast.

Some of you, most of you returned to worship this morning and Tom has the audacity to preach love your enemies on the heels of Christ arose.

What’s up with that?

Love your enemies.

Here is the escape clause.  Here is the golden parachute for those who are not up for this whole love your enemies business.

What’s that?

Jesus didn’t say this for everyone. He was not talking to everyone.  Well, to whom was he speaking?

But to you who are listening I say:

Really? That seems a little flimsy.

Jesus said, I’m really only talking to those who are actually listening.  Who is listening?  Those who profess Jesus is Lord and are ready to put his words into practice. That’s who Jesus was speaking to—those who were ready to hear his words and put them into practice.

Lord, I am READY to trust you completely!

Those who were listening wanted to understand more so they could do more.

But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

This is not for the Christian tourist. It is not for the casual follower of God. It is not for the slightly interested until something comes up.

This is for those who have professed Jesus is Lord and who know and understand what that means, and they embrace it. We embrace that profession. Jesus is Lord!

  Jesus is not an app that you go to when things get tough. That’s too transactional.

We do go to Jesus in times of trouble, but it is a short trip for he is our Lord and he is already with us and we are already doing the things he told us to do. We are walking with the Lord.

Let’s see where this pericope lands us.

This chapter tells us that Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath.  The religious leaders were so fixed on the rules that they forgot the relationship with the Lord was what was central. They followed the rules and missed God’s heart.

This chapter tells us the names of all the disciples.

This chapter parallels the Sermon on the Mount and Beatitudes found in Matthew 5, at least as it concerns suffering and persecution.

This is the chapter where we find love your enemies and most of us say, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Life is hard enough without loving those whom we are perfectly equipped to hate with all of our hearts.  What’s an enemy for if you can’t hate ‘em.

Today, I will tell you that loving your enemies is not really an impossible command. It is overly practical. It blesses you as much as your enemies.

Sure. In the eternal realm, I will be blessed for loving my enemies. Yeah, OK, whatever.  In the meantime, my enemy is running all over me.

Really?

How many times do you have to contend with an enemy?  I proffer that it is much less that we might think and surely less than we advertise.

When is the last time that you were face to face with someone who wanted to kill you?

When is the last time that you had to check and see if you had enough ammunition to make it through the night?

When is the last time that you had to defend the perimeter of the school against all enemies foreign and domestic?

Our troubles do not lie in our enemies. Our Lord and Savior has overcome our enemies. Our struggles lie in the heavenly realms. Our struggles are with evil as it has occupied the world and has too many encampments in our own hearts.

Our struggle is very seldom with an enemy of flesh but with one of darkness in our own hearts.

Our struggles are so often so close to home that we are blinded to them.  Who can hurt us more—someone we don’t know who would just as soon shoot me as speak to me or someone that matters to me?

Really, who can hurt us the most?

The guy or gal or kid who philosophically has been conditioned to hate you for being an American or a Christian or someone who speaks up for good morals and ethics…

Or

Someone close to you? Someone near and dear to you? Someone that you love very much?

Over the past several years, I have proffered the following statement for your consideration.

The law as given for our own good—that’s straightforward in writing stuff right there.  But I also ask us to consider that the law mitigated the evil in our hearts. To mitigate is to reduce the effects of something and it doesn’t go far enough.

Jesus wants us to cast aside our hearts of evil and stone and receive the divine heart of our Lord, whom we know mostly through the Spirit.

Jesus uses hyperbole on a recurring basis but this statement is not one that says pluck out your eye is it offends you. It is one that says demonstrate love and care and kindness for someone that we don’t know very well.

What does that mean?  It mostly means pray for them. Pray for those who hate you or persecute you or are otherwise lost in the ways of the world.

Our direct involvement with those whom we might lump into the enemy category is minimal.  We spend most of our time sorting out our own hearts and minds as we deal with people that we say we love.

Jesus expands our thinking. If loving your enemy is even possible, how much more can I love those that are flesh and blood?

Can we not do a better job of caring for each other?

We do a lot in that area, but what if we posed the question in this way.

How can I take the time, money, energy, and effort that I currently expend on enemies that I will never see and use these valuable resources to love my friends and family?

And there you have it. Tom managed to work in the Parable of the Talents yet one more time.

What did you do with what God gave you?

We have gone from He arose the victor over the dark domain and he lives forever with his saints to reign to Discipleship Time.

We are saved.

He is risen and so too will we be risen.

We take the good news to the world and along the way, we learn to love one another. Loving your enemies seems absurd, but it actuality, it just practical.

Don’t spend your time on that which does not profit you and your discipleship. Where will your love produce the biggest return?

With you and your demeanor and countenance and readiness to do what God tells you to do.

Imagine taking your money—however much that is or isn’t—and going to a financial institution to invest it. The fund manager says that 75% of your investment will make great returns but 25% is just being thrown away on stuff that we know is not profitable or productive.

Do you not look elsewhere to invest what you had to work hard to get? Don’t you want a return on your full investment?

Love your enemies is practical. Hating them takes too much time and effort that could produce good results at home.

That’s not the case for everyone. Some are called to take the gospel into the heart of enemy territory. If that is you, then love your enemies takes on a more personal nature.  But for most, we just need to pray for our enemies from afar and love those who matter so much to us, who are likely much closer.

Does this lessen the intensity of the command?

On the contrary. Our best efforts for those who have declared us as enemies is to pray for them and then be known by our love wherever we go.

Love your enemies. That’s an easy one.

Focus your time and effort of loving, forgiving, blessing, and living this life to the full with those whom you say you love.

If I am already praying for my enemies, then loving those whom I really want to love becomes so much easier. It begins to become our nature.

If I can love those far away by praying for them, how much easier is it to help the kid or the family or the traveler when we encounter them in our own neighborhoods.

How much easier is it to forgive those whom I love and don’t want something brewing between or among us? How much easier to forgive and love and embrace those whom I love when my enemies don’t suck one iota of energy or life from me. I will pray for them.

This is not adopting the pagan practices of loving those who will love you back. This is not tit-for-tat. This is targeted love.

I will target my enemies with prayer. I will be faithful in those prayers.

I will target my friends and family and those who just happen to live on the same part of the planet as me with very intentional or purposeful love. Yes, that will include some prayers but it will also include the hugs and smiles and forgiveness and assurance that we are a forgiven people.

To target my love when I am led to deliver it is grace lived out in our lives.

Love your enemies. Love those whom you want to love even more.

Jesus has raised our sights. We pray for those whom we will likely never see and we pray for, forgive, and rejoice with those whom se see almost every day.

Amen.

Are we truly known by our love by everyone?

 Read Luke 6:27-28

God loves you. Love one another. How easily do the words roll off our lips now, but do we mean it? Do we really mean love one another? C’mon, there’s some bad people out there

It’s the Sunday following Resurrection Sunday. The faithful are here. Many that were here last week we might not see for a while.

We remembered Jesus the way he told us to remember him and then we had a big celebration. Now, it’s a week later and we are back to putting the words of Jesus into practice.

But to get back on course, we get a major course correction.

Love God. Got it. I’m in.

Lone one another. Yep. Good to go. Let’s do this.

Love your enemies. There’s always a catch, isn’t there.

So, if we can do the Bible math, we get our most straightforward answer of answers.  It’s love, love, and more love for the one who truly wants to set aside the gods of this world and seek the one true God.

Love God, and love each other, and that includes those who we don’t like or who don’t like us or who might be on the other side of the world saying bad things about us.

Love the person who if they could would be outside your front yard with an RPG ready to make your day. Chances are, those who might call you an enemy won’t ever show up on your doorstep, but they would still love to do you harm.

Love everyone made in the image of God.

Let’s put it this way. Many of the people who rejoiced at Saul’s conversion were the same people he had persecuted.

Some of those people were dead. Then realize they were on Saul’s welcoming committee in heaven. Now, that’s some words into practice right there. Now, that’s some known as his disciples by your love right there.

We are defined as a people by our love. God loves us and we love others so much so that people know that we belong to God by that love.

We are defined as a people by our love

In the days of Abraham, the sign of circumcision was given to indicate the men among God’s Chosen People. Today, we have a sign in the spirit.  God’s Spirit lives within us.

God not only told us to love him and each other—everyone—he lives within us to help us do just that.

The default setting for the Christian must be love. Yes, we are:

·       Wise

·       Discerning

·       Generous

·       Faithful in a few things

·       Ready to serve our Lord in many things

·       Good stewards of our time, talent, and treasures

·       People who speak the truth in love

·       People who desire to please our Lord

·       People who long to hear Well done good and faithful servant from our Master

·       People who know some scripture and have much of it written on their hearts.

But our nature above every nature that tries to dwell within us is love.  God is love. We are to be known as his disciples by our love. It must be love that governs if Jesus is really the Lord of our lives.

That includes those whom we don’t like. That includes those who don’t really know us. That includes people who would just as soon that we get hit by a meteor or by lightning than receive our daily bread.

But we are called to love them.

And we can’t do it, at least not on our own.  We must submit to the spirit of God that resides within us to be able to love those who seem unlovable to us.

So the question of the day is:  Do we love God enough to love those who don’t love us and we would like to go on hating?

This is trust God over our own understanding once again.

This is putting what God has given me to work to produce a good return in this case that return is love for others.

This is the pastor gets off easy day.  Preach love, love, and more love. It’s for everyone made in the image of God. It must be love.

Love everyone.

Amen.

John 13 - Part 3

Read John 13

I will begin with the end of the chapter.  Peter is pumped up.  He doesn’t understand everything.  In fact, Jesus really upset his apple cart when he washed his feet.  Then there was this business about one of the them betraying him.  Jesus told his followers where he was going they could not go, at least yet.

Peter asked, “Why can’t I go?  I will lay down my life for you.”

Jesus told him that he had some real experiences ahead of him.  Some of them would seem unbelievable at this moment where Peter seemed so dedicated to following Jesus wherever that path led.  Here’s the one that had to strike at Peter’s core.

Very truly I tell you, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!

Ouch!  There’s more on that story down the road, but let’s stay in the room with Jesus and the disciples for now.

His hour had come.  Things intensified among the disciples even though they were gathered for a meal.  It was time for Jesus to live out the glory appointed to him.  That is, he would die for our sins and take his life up again.  That still did not register with his closest friends.

Jesus told his followers that where he was going, they could not go—yet.  There would be more on that in the chapters to come.

Jesus then gave his disciples some words that are very dear to us.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

We know the command.  We repeat it frequently.  If I say God loves you, I will surely get many responding Love one another.  It’s a good antiphonal tool, but we need to understand the surrounding verbiage.

We know that we are to love the Lord our God with everything that we are and have.  And we are to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves.

We all told that all of the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.  Sometimes we cannot connect the horticultural directives with love, but we understand that every directive that God gave us is rooted in his love for us.

Love is important to God.  It is so important that we are told that is his identity.  God is love.  God has many names that reflect his many attributes, but at the core of God's existence is love.

OK, we get that.  Love God to the max and love my neighbor as much as I love myself.  I get it.

So, why in the world would Jesus give us a new command that sounds a lot like the old ones?  Love one another, yeah, we get that.

Jesus prefaced the command with as I have loved you.  Jesus had just washed the feet of his disciples to demonstrate servanthood and was a very short time away from dying on the cross.  Jesus had begun his ministry with the words follow me. 

Follow me.  These are words that only an infantryman can appreciate.  It’s not, go take that hill.  It’s follow me.

 Follow me.  There are some words that say skin in the game. 

Jesus was not telling his disciples to love their neighbor as much as they loved themselves.  He told them to love each other as much as he had loved them.  They lived with Jesus for 3 years.  They were with him when he was teaching and preaching, when he performed miracles, when he told the woman who was surely going to be stoned, that he did not condemn her.

They were with him when he loved those lumped into the general group labeled sinners and when he healed those pushed to the outermost parts of respectable society.  They were with him when he confronted religious hypocrisy. 

We have all heard the phrase, lead by example.  Jesus just commanded those who followed him to love by example, by his example.

Before, people were commanded to love God with everything they had.  Now Jesus is telling his followers to do the same with each other. That raised the bar.  That raised the bar a whole bunch.

You have heard the Robert Browning saying that a man’s reach should exceed his grasp.   We as people who seek God and his Kingdom and his righteousness couldn’t even get the love your neighbor as much as you love yourself part accomplished.  Now, we are to love each other as much as Christ loved his disciples, as much as he loved the world.

We must reach for more.

Look at it this way.  Jesus said that he came not to do away with the Law and the prophets but to fulfill them—to complete them.  He came to accomplish them.

Do you think that he did that or did he come up short?  Did he fulfill the law or was he just spitballin’ a little after rattling off the Beatitudes with no intent on following through? I’m really hoping that he didn’t come up short.  I’m counting on the fact that an unblemished Lamb went to the cross, not some Malachi era sacrifice.

Did his words, it is finished, mean he had accomplished what he was sent to do or that he threw in the towel and just said, get me out of here? I’m counting on the fact that he finished the work that he was sent to do.

The law did not go away.  It was not abolished.  None of us—ever—accomplished living by the law.  Some lived in God’s favor and were after his own heart, but none could live faultlessly by the directives promulgated from Mount Sinai through Moses.  Not one, save Jesus.

So, when Jesus completed a life that accomplished what the law and prophets had prescribed, surely there would be more.  He did not do this just to say, the status quo is still in effect, there was more.  There is more.  That more is to love God and his creation—each other—with everything we have.  In fact, our love for God is most often demonstrated by our love for each other.

We will fulfill the law.  We will fulfill it through love that we know in Christ Jesus.  Some people will think this a cop out.  It’s too easy. 

If that is your mindset, consider the example of Jesus.  He could have remained in heaven and been obedient to this Father and righteously brought condemnation upon a sinful world, but he came to save not condemn.  This was a tough road.  Judging us on obedience would have been much easier, but his way was his Father’s way which is love.

Jesus has told us that his way must be our way and that way is love.  He did what no other man had done—fulfilled the written law.  Now he has placed a more challenging law on our hearts.

We have been graduated by Christ from that which works from the outside to that which emanates from within. 

Salvation is here.  Condemnation is gone.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God that we know in Christ Jesus, but the bar on the metrics of our response has been raised.

We will continue to say God loves you and Love one another, but we must know that the second part aims higher than the original command which was to love our neighbor as ourselves.  It does not do away with loving our neighbor as much as we love ourselves.  That command has just become a mile marker that we pass on our way to loving as much as Christ loved us.

Just as the law did not go away but the glory of God shown in Christ Jesus surpassed it, so too does this command surpasses the first.

Remember our command is to love one another.  That always applies.  But remember that Jesus commands those of us who follow him to love each other as much as he loved us.

It may seem like trying to learn calculus and elementary analysis in the third grade, but that is our target.  Surely, our reach exceeds our grasp, but we keep reaching nonetheless.

That is our command from our Master and he has not orphaned us.  He is with us as we reach higher and love more.

As much as he loved us, so we must love each other.

I am reminded of a quote most frequently attributed to President John Kennedy, but he was quoting Reverend Phillip Brooks who had passed from this earth some 30 years before Kennedy was born.  Brooks said:

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.

Let me make corollary here.  Don’t pray for God to lower the bar.  Pray that he equips us to reach it exactly where he placed it.

That is our command from our Master.  He is with us.  His Spirit lives within us.  Let’s see how far we can reach.

As much as he loved us, so we must love each other.

By way of encouragement, I add this.  Sometimes people call and jumble the words Cumberland Presbyterian.  Sometimes even Presbyterian is a mouthful.  I smile and chuckle inside when someone on the phone can’t get the words right and just say, “Is this that love church?”

These are affirmations that we are headed the right direction.  There’s heading the right direction and only going a few steps and there’s getting close to the mark.

How will we know when we are getting close to the mark?  How will we know?

People will know us by our love.  Not just when the name of the denomination is hard to pronounce and even more difficult to spell.  They will know us by our love.

Not by our cars.  Not by our tee shirts.  Not by our worship attendance.  Not by our memes and likes and shares.  Not by our political pontifications.  Not even by how much scripture we memorize, but by our love.

By our love!

People will know we belong to Christ Jesus by our love.  They will know we are Christians by our love.

Amen.