In an old Peanuts cartoon, Linus and Lucy are standing at the window watching the rain. Lucy says, “If it doesn’t stop raining everything will be washed away.”
“Oh no!” says Linus. “Genesis chapter 9 says that never again will God wash everything away.”
“Thank you.” says Lucy, “that is a great comfort to me.”
Linus replies, “Sound theology will do that.”
And here, at the beginning of the New Year, we are exploring the foundational theology of the Christian life. We started talking last Sunday about discovering Christianity as the beloved life. In the baptism of Jesus, a voice from heaven comes, calling Jesus “The Beloved” which means “Dearly Loved”. And when we believe in the name of Jesus, and are baptized ourselves in his name, we are recognizing that we human beings are dearly beloved too! You see, the deepest level of accepting Jesus means accepting the fact that you and others are passionately and completely loved by God! And when you claim that extraordinary gift of grace, you take the first baby-step in a lifelong journey of learning to love as Jesus loves.
And that’s great theology!
And if the first baby-step in the beloved life is accepting how much God loves you, the second one is by returning God’s love by loving your neighbor as yourself. Loving others is the primary task of those who follow Jesus, and teaching people to do so is the primary task of the Christian Church.
In today’s Gospel reading, some of the disciples of John the Baptist are meeting Jesus for the first time. They are basking in his warm friendship, and enjoying his wonderfully redemptive way of relating with people. I guess you might say, they are experiencing for the first time in their lives the power and depth of God’s love.
But, for one of the people drawn to the love of Jesus, it was unfathomable that he would get to receive something that his brother might miss. So the Bible tells us that Andrew “first found his brother.” And that brother was Simon Peter, who that very day, discovered God’s love too!
He first found his brother.
Do you understand what this means? The very first thing you and I must do after receiving God’s love ourselves is to reach out with that love to our brother – our sister – our friend – our neighbor. The primary focus of the Christian life is to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. And the way we do it is by loving our neighbor as ourselves!
This is the highest and final goal of the Christian life – to love and to learn how to love as God does. Our wholeness as human beings depends upon living out the Great Commandment.
In the sixteenth century there was a monk by the name of Dorotheos of Gaza who used a simple diagram to illustrate the connection between loving God and loving people. He asked his followers to imagine life as a circle, with God as a point in the center. Imagine now that the outside of the circle is the world, and the lives of human beings are lines drawn from the outside of the circle to the point in the center. Get the picture?
Now consider this: as you follow a single line from the outside toward God, all the lines come closer together! Dorotheos taught that this is the way human beings relate to God and one another because, he said, “the closer they are to God, the closer they become to one another; and the closer they are to one another, the closer they become to God.”
This is the spiritual principle of the Great Commandment: when you love your neighbor, you are loving God; and when you are loving God, you are loving your neighbor
And then there’s another side to this illustration. For if you follow a single line from the center of the circle out to the edge again, you’ll notice that all the lines become farther apart as they go away from the center. This, Dorotheos says, is because “this is the very nature of love. The more we are turned away from and do not love God, the greater the distance that separates us from our neighbor…”
So the highest way you can love God is not by “being spiritual”, not by “keeping the law”, not by “going to church”, not by “keeping pure.” The highest way you can love God is by learning to love your neighbor. This is what it means to live the beloved life.
So today, let’s talk about some baby-steps in the process of learning to love your neighbor as yourself. And let’s not begin with specific acts of compassion. Instead, let’s get even more basic than that.
First of all, learning to love as God loves begins with giving up our judgmentalism toward others. This is a big one, because we all do it. We see others through the filter not of who they truly are, but of how life has shaped them.
One of the most important lessons of the beloved life is to let go of our preconceptions of other people.
Roberta Bondi tells the story of the death of a friend’s son. Stefan was one of those kids who just went in the wrong direction. As a teenager, he left home. He lived on the street. Had his body pierced. Ate out of dumpsters. Lived the kind of life that none of us would want for our children. Everyone who knew Stefan’s parents felt so sorry that they should have such a rotten kid. And then, one night, Stefan was in a motorcycle accident. Family and friends gathered in the ICU waiting room while his life hung in the balance. And while there, an amazing thing began to happen. Many of Stefan’s friends from the street began to appear. At first, it was very uncomfortable for the family. But as time went on, these friends of Stefan – with their multiple earrings, eyebrow rings, large tattoos, spiky hair, black lipstick, and other fashion statements – began to reveal to his family a part of his life they’d never known.
There was a young man who spoke of Stefan’s constant efforts to lift him out of chronic depression. Stefan would visit almost every day, to check on him, to invite him somewhere, to build him up and encourage him. Stefan also regularly called to check on a young woman who had moved by herself to Florida and felt very alone. Stefan called to pick up her spirits and to just let her know someone was thinking of her. So moved by his care was she that she had driven all the way from Florida to sit and wait at the hospital. And there were other stories of Stefan’s generosity, his help, his wonderful friendship. Bondi says this was a side of Stefan that they did not know, and that there was, in this odd community of street people, so much unexpected goodness, generosity and sensitivity. In fact, one of the scruffy young man left his bright yellow shirt draped over a chair by Stefan’s bed because he knew Stefan liked that shirt, and maybe it would help.
They were together for several days– the family and friends of Stefan – waiting for him to die. When the time drew near, a group of Stefan’s worn out, battered-looking friends came up to one of the women. They said they knew that she was a religious person and wondered if she would lead them in a prayer service for Stefan. And so they formed a circle, and there they sat together – grieving long-haired, tattooed friends of Stefan interspersed with middle-class men and women in conventional hair and clothing. And after they prayed together, one by one, they went to the room to say “Goodbye.” One of the young men stayed with Stefan at his bedside, softly playing “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” on his guitar.
Roberta Bondi says she learned through this experience that there is nothing more destructive to the self and to the love of others than judgmentalism. And in the experience of Stefan’s death, God showed her what true love is, for it was Stefan’s friends and not the Christians there who embodied the love of God both to Stefan and to the friends of his family.
Is there any one here today who truly knows what’s beating in the heart of another person? Is there anyone who can say for sure how the Holy Spirit is working down deep in another person’s life in places and ways we are not able to discern? Is there anyone here who can honestly say that God’s love is not at work in another person’s life?
Jesus said, “Don’t judge.” Judgmentalism interferes with the power of love to heal, and redeem, and lead people to God!
Now along with putting away judgmentalism, another baby-step along the way of the beloved life is learning to look at the world through the filter of God’s love. That little Peanuts cartoon at the beginning of today’s sermon is really very profound because Lucy represents the way most of look at life. We see it in terms of what’s wrong, what’s broken, what’s not right. How easily we look at the world and other people in terms of their sin!
But Linus offers a radically different way of approaching life: not by looking at it through the filter of sin, but through the filter of God’s promises!
And God’s promises reveal God’s incredibly passionate love for every human being!
Now it’s not easy converting from a way of life in which we have habitually thought of others in terms of God’s judgment instead of God’s love. And this is why it is so important for us to latch onto the life of Jesus, drink it in, absorb it, and learn from him how to relate to the world differently than ever before. Only in the life of Jesus do we see the role-model of neighbor-love. So draw closer to Jesus by reflecting on his life, by re-reading the Gospels, by paying attention to his way of seeing people in terms of God’s love for them. And then take a third baby step in the beloved life.
And that is learning to love as God loves by re-learning prayer.
You know, I may have told you before that I have a friend who is a man of deep prayer, and that his devotion to prayer is something that even rubbed off on his pet parrot. Soon after getting the bird, all the parrot knew how to say was, “Let us pray!”
Neat, huh?
Well, another acquaintance of mine – like my other friend – is also a lover of parrots. He has one of his own too, but it is not a prayerful parrot like the other. Learning from what he hears around the household, all this parrot knows how to say is, “Let’s neck!” For you younger people, necking is the same as “making out.”
Well, over the Christmas holidays, these two friends of mine thought it might be fun to get the two birds together, so they did. Each of the parrots stepped slowly from their cage, sort of looked each other over, sniffed each other a bit….and then one bird screeched, “Let’s neck!”
And the other parrot fell to his knees and said, “Hallelujah, my prayers have been answered!”
What do you pray about mostly? For your own needs to be met? Or for God to do good things for others? Is it for God to help you through life’s difficulties? Is it prayer that praises God and expresses how much you love Him?
All those are okay, but there is another kind of prayer that is crucial. It is the most basic form of prayer for the living of the Christian life. It is the prayer you offer asking God to teach you how to love specific people in specific situations.
Your child. Your spouse. Your parent. The gas station attendant. The person who works at the Pro Shop. The waitress at the restaurant. The people who cross your path every day, and especially those who irritate you. The guy with the sign that says “Will Work For Food” even when you know he won’t. The son or daughter who, despite your best efforts, keeps making the wrong choices over and over again. The family member or friend who hates God because life turned the wrong way, and is continually deriding anyone who believes in such a God.
Who are the people who cross your path every day?
Prayer is a means by which you can meet with God and think about how you can love those people – how you can move past the obstacles in the way – how you can focus on being compassionate toward them, and ultimately helpful. Prayer is a means by which you can ask God to help you grow beyond your own limitations, and your tendency to judge, and your inability to persevere when your love is rejected. Prayer is a means of learning to love as God loves!
And so here we are, at the start of a brand new week, and we are called to the beloved life. It’s not enough to receive God’s love and just keep it for yourself. God’s love in our lives is not complete until we first go and find our brother.
So, dear friends….as this new year begins…”GO!”
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