Every Methodist pastor of the last 250 years has answered the same set of 17 questions – questions that John Wesley himself asked of all his ministers. They range from the most basic and fundamental issues of Christianity: “Have you faith in Christ” to the complicated: “Have you studied the doctrines of the United Methodist Church and do you believe that our doctrines are in harmony with Holy Scripture?” to the challenging: “Are you earnestly striving after perfection in love?”
But it is number 16 that is the “trick question” for many pastors: “Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in your work?” Of course, they ask this of brand new pastors who are fresh out of seminary and often have substantial student loans! So this question, “Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in your work?” can be a tough one to answer.
The joke among pastors is that when the bishop asks this question, the proper answer is simply, “I don’t embarrass easily!”
But debt seems to be something we all deal with. We owe something to everybody it seems! As soon as we pay what we owe the phone company, the electric bill arrives. As soon as we pay what we owe the gas company, the cable bill arrives. As soon as we pay what we owe the bank for the mortgage payment, the mastercard bill arrives. We owe something to everybody!
Yet here is Paul telling us to “owe no one anything!” Owe no one anything… except to love one another. For a moment, you might think Paul is letting us off the hook – owe no one anything – so I suppose I can go about doing what I please without thinking about others. But then he finishes the sentence – except to love one another.
And anyone who has ever tried Christian love knows that it’s no easy task! In the gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples that the one who loves is the one who lays down his life for his friends. Yikes! We’re supposed to owe no one anything, except to give our entire lives away in love. Hmm, maybe Paul isn’t letting us off the hook after all.
In fact, Paul says that all of the commandments can be summed up in this one commandment – to love. He lists some of the well-known commandments we find in the Old Testament – do not murder, do not steal, do not covet, do not commit adultery – and he says that these and all the other commandments can be summed up in one – love your neighbor as yourself.
Some of us have heard this phrase so often it has almost lost its meaning. Too often we hear it and think it means simply to be nice to people or to not hurt other people. So this morning I hope we can recover some of that lost meaning. I hope we will invite the Holy Spirit to light the fire that will make it blaze in our midst once more – reminding us what an amazing thing it is that we even could love our neighbor as ourselves!
Love your neighbor as yourself. When I hear it, I immediately have three questions – “How do we love?” “Who is our neighbor?” and “How do we love ourselves?”
The first one, “How do we love?” can be a tricky one in our society, where we often act as though love is simply a feeling. We feel love. Or we don’t feel love. We fall into love. We fall back out of love. But we certainly don’t choose who we love. We either feel it. Or we don’t feel it. We can’t do anything about it either way. At least this is what our society would have you believe.
But Christian love has never been simply about “feeling” love. Because Christian love is always tied to God’s love, because God first loved us. Because Christ loved us enough to become one of us, to demonstrate a life of love, and to allow love for humanity to lead him to the cross, to die, and to rise again – because of this love from God, we can love others.
We see others as God’s children – as those who Christ died for – and we want them to know God’s love so we share love with them. Even when we don’t feel particularly “in love”.
Anyone who has ever had children knows about this type of love. Because I guarantee that every parent has days when they don’t feel very loving toward their kids – when their kids are making poor decisions, when they’re engaging in actions that hurt themselves or others, when they’re doing those things that just make a parent go nuts. Yet it’s at those times when a parent’s love is the most needed – not a feeling of love, but an attitude of love.
And likewise, we all know that we as human beings do things that make it very difficult for God to feel loving toward us. When we hurt ourselves or we hurt others or we hurt God, love must be hard for God to feel toward us.
But we have a great God. Even in those moments of God’s greatest disappointment with us, God still loves us. Even in those moments, Jesus still overcame death on the cross for us. Sometimes we seem to do everything we can to make ourselves unlovable, but God still loves us.
And because God has first shown love for us, we are able to turn and share that love with others, helping to lead them to God’s love for themselves. “How do we love?” We love by sharing the gifts that God has given to us, even when we don’t “feel” loving.
The second question I wondered about was “Who is my neighbor?” And as I read through the Bible, it becomes clear that our neighbors are everyone we are in relationship with. It’s interesting that Paul tells us that all the “don’t” commandments – don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t covet, don’t commit adultery – are summed up with a “do” commandment – do love your neighbor.
So where all the “don’t” commandments meant not being in bad relationships, the commandment to love your neighbor means to be in good relationships with others.
Because I could simply lock myself in my home and never come out again, and I would succeed in meeting all the “don’t” commandments. But I couldn’t be in relationship with others. I couldn’t love my neighbor. So our neighbors are those with whom we are already in relationship, but loving our neighbor also calls us into new relationships – even with those we might not like or even be comfortable with.
When someone asked this question of Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”, his response was to tell a story about the good Samaritan. A man was beat up by robbers on a road and left for dead. Nobody would help him until finally a Samaritan dared to cross the road, enter into a relationship with him, and truly love him. The others did not recognize him as their neighbor.
So, the homeless family, the abuse survivor, the famine victim halfway round the world, the kid that gets picked on at school – each is our neighbor and we are called to find ways to enter into relationships with them and to love them as our neighbor – not simply by not harming them – because the people who walked on the other side of the road from the beaten man didn’t harm him – but by loving them as a neighbor.
And again, we can do this because of what God has given to us. God chose to enter into relationship with us through the person of Jesus Christ, and every right relationship we have with others is modeled after our relationship with Christ. God loved us through relationship, allowing us to love others through relationship with them.
This is one of the amazing things about our God. Rather than simply giving us a list of do’s and don’t’s and telling us to figure out how to live it out – which is what so many philosophies have done over the years – God chose to come to us and show us how to live in relationship and in love with one another and with God.
And this is really the answer to the third question I raised – “How do we love ourselves?”
We are told by society that we need to be more attractive, more wealthy, more popular, more successful to really be loved. But we know as Christians that God has loved us enough already to come and die on the cross for us. We don’t need to be more anything to be loved by God! And if God loves me, who am I to disagree? We have been created by God and God has declared us worthy of love! And because God is so generous in giving us abundant love, we are able to generously give love to others.
We’ve seen in this simple phrase – love your neighbor as yourself – that love is not simply a feeling, love is not simply do’s and don’t’s, love is not simply doing no harm to others, love is not simply doing good things for those we like. Christian love is more than all these things. Christian love is more than what we do or say or believe – Christian love is a lifestyle. And what an amazing witness to the world we can offer when we live a lifestyle of love.
God loved us, and we can share God’s love with others. This simple and beautiful message is summed up in one of my favorite hymns, Freely, Freely:
God forgave my sin in Jesus’ name,
I’ve been born again in Jesus’ name,
And in Jesus’ name I come to you,
To share his love as he told me to.
He said, “Freely, freely you have received,
Freely, freely give.
Go in my name, and because you believe,
Others will know that I live.”
Amen.
