Love People

Mark 12:28-34

April 23, 2023 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I think I have shared before with some of you how stressful going to the eye doctor is for me. I’m told I am very picky about how I see, and so when the doctor puts that big mask on my face and she asks which one is clearer, A or B, C or D, I want to get it right. And now they have these new tests where you’re supposed to click a button when you see a vague point of light off to the side…or when the house becomes clear…it’s all very stressful because I want to get the answers right so my vision is right. The doctor says to relax and part of me wants to say, “How about you try answering all these questions?”

We’re in week two of this series on our church’s vision, and in a lot of ways what I’m attempting to do is to give all of us a vision test—hopefully not one as stressful as the one you get in the eye doctor’s office. But, still, I believe it’s important we get this right. As I shared last week, our Leadership Council has spent the first few months of the year reading and studying and praying about where we are called to go as a church in these times. Our mission is the same: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. But how are we going to do that? What will we see when that mission is being fulfilled? That’s what vision is about. It’s about how we get to where God is calling us. And so last week, I introduced you to six words we want everyone who is a part of Mount Pleasant to know. In fact, I hope that when someone in the community asks you, “What is Mount Pleasant about?” these are the words that come tumbling out of your mouth, maybe even without you thinking about it: Love God. Love People. Love Life. (If you can’t remember that, get a t-shirt and just point people to the back of it!) So last week we talked about loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, which Jesus says is the greatest commandment. Out of all 613 commands in the Old Testament, Jesus said the greatest is to love God with everything that you are. Well actually, that’s half of it according to Jesus. He went on and added a second command, taken from the book of Leviticus: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). Then he said, “There is no commandment greater than these” (12:31).

Some people will say Jesus cheated. He was asked for one commandment. One. “Which is the most important?” the lawyer asked (12:28). And like someone who is asked which is their favorite ice cream flavor and they say, “That one…and that one,” Jesus chooses two as “the most important.” Actually, on one hand, this is a common rabbinical teaching method. You can read in the book of Proverbs, for instance, how the teacher will say something like, “There are three things God opposes, four that make him turn his back” or something like that. Okay, is it three or four? The teacher is getting your attention that way. But I think there’s more to it than just a teaching method here. I believe Jesus really is giving only one command, and his command is love. The word there is agape. You probably know what it means: love without restrictions, without strings attached, without expectations of receiving any return. Love God. Love neighbor. It’s really two sides of the same coin. If you love God, you will love your neighbor who is made in the image of God (cf. Genesis 1:27). And you can only love your neighbor if you love God first. That’s why the order is important. We love God, and that enables us to love the people around us. Love God. Love People.

So we had a long discussion in our Leadership Council meetings—across more than one meeting actually—about this particular piece of the vision. Oh, not about whether we should love people or not. The discussion centered on what we mean by “people.” Because we all know we think we’re good at loving people. But what we usually mean by that is we love the people we like, or the people we know, or especially the people who are just like us and think like us and act like us. Those people are easy to love! So we toyed with other ways of trying to say the same thing and still fit it on a t-shirt. In the end, we obviously ended up with the phrase, “Love people,” but I want you to hear me clearly this morning. We mean, and we believe Jesus means, that love is extended to everyone. No exceptions. No exclusions. And when Jesus says “neighbor,” he doesn’t just mean the people who live physically next to you. In fact, in one of his most famous stories, Jesus actually defined “neighbor” as the person you may dislike the most. The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) was told in response to a question from (presumably) another teacher of the law: “Who is my neighbor?” And the answer to the question was, surprisingly, someone who that lawyer would never have given the time of day to—a hated, despised Samaritan. The implication of Jesus’ parable is that if the Samaritan can be considered a neighbor, then anyone can be. So when we say “Love people,” we mean everyone. This morning, I want to touch on three types of people in particular we’re called to love. These three are not meant to be an exhaustive list, but they are meant to get you thinking about who God is calling you to love in your world.

When Jesus said to “love your neighbor as yourself,” he is including in that command people who are hard to love. Now, right this moment, someone popped into your head, maybe several someones. Please don’t point at them if they are in the sanctuary today. We all have people we find hard to love, and if they’re not relatives it might be easy just to ignore them. You don’t have to be around them. But then there are relatives we have to deal with at holidays and family get togethers, and they just rub us the wrong way. It might be their politics, their incessant offering of advice, or even the way they approach their faith that gets under your skin, and it becomes hard if not impossible to separate the person from the actions. If you don’t know yet what I’m talking about, let me share the words of a song by Jason Gray I heard on the radio. I’d tell you the title, but that would give it away:

Here you come again raising trouble in my comment section

I know I can always count on you

To be the final word on public health, religion, and elections

You even brought a YouTube clip for proof

I wanna bring the heat

I stop and take a beat

I type then I delete

Until I find a way to say a kind thing without lying

Yes, Jesus loves you and I’m trying

They say that every family has that one obnoxious uncle

You have the distinction of being mine

Lame magic tricks and politics

Big stories about how you’re humble

When it’s time to eat you cut in line

The first one back for more

The last one out the door

It’s been that way since the divorce

So I’ll laugh at the jokes you tell

To keep yourself from crying

Yes, Jesus loves you and I’m trying…

Sometimes that’s the best we can do. “Jesus loves you, and I’m trying.” I heard a story this week from Pastor Paul McClintock in Billings, Montana, who has helped his congregation develop a new practice. When they have a disagreement or want to be short with somebody, he’s taught them to repeat these words: “Imago Dei, Imago Dei, Imago Dei.” That’s a theological phrase that means “image of God,” and it’s meant as a reminder that the other person, the irritating person, is a child of God and they are someone for whom Christ died. Pastor McClintock says, “I’m called to love them. I may not agree with them or adopt their theology, but I’m still called to love them” (https://www.breakpoint.org/the-church-shines-in-the-colson-fellows-affiliate-program/). Love people—even those who are hard to love.

When Jesus said to “love your neighbor as yourself,” he is also including in that command people who are on what we might call the challenging side of life. Sometimes we make this false division between doing justice in the world, showing mercy in the world, and finding personal salvation. I said it last week and I’ll say it again this week: our salvation is personal, to be sure, but it is not private. As followers of the one who healed the lame and fed the hungry, we are called to do the same things he did. Paul told the church to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). James said that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). We are not saved by our works, but we are saved for good works. Paul, again, put it this way: “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Jesus himself told a parable where the difference between believers and not is found in the way they relate to “the least of these” (cf. Matthew 25:31-46). Our neighbor includes the guy on the street corner looking for help, the family who can’t ever seem to get ahead, the unemployed and the underemployed, and the ones who maybe just need a bit of help to stand on their own.

One of the ministries we are connected with and support is the 14th and Chestnut Community Center, which is located in a former Methodist church building. We have several folks who go there every week to work in the center and we also collect items for their kitchen and food pantry every other month. Mount Pleasant has been a partner with 14th and Chestnut for a long time, and I’m pleased this morning to have Amanda Otieno, one of the co-directors of the Center, with us. Will you welcome her this morning as she joins me on the stage?

QUESTIONS FOR AMANDA:

1. Tell us about the main ministries of the center. Why do you (personally) do what you do?
2. How does 14th & Chestnut love their neighbor, in the immediate community and beyond?
3. How can we best pray for you and the Center?

Thank you, Amanda. So—love your neighbor, including those who are on the challenging side of life.

And when Jesus said to “love your neighbor as yourself,” he also included in that command people we don’t see. One of the unique callings God has placed on this church is reaching out to those who are often invisible in our community, specifically through the special needs community. If you’ve not been here very long, you may not know that our special needs ministry, which we call Grace Unlimited, began because one of our youth at the time needed something different than what traditional youth ministry provides. So a group was started, and it was small to begin with until we joined up with the Tim Tebow Foundation and hosted our first Night to Shine. That was in 2017 and after that moment, the Tuesday evening Grace Unlimited groups really took off. I don’t know if you know or not but they meet most every Tuesday during the school year for three hours for worship, learning, and practical activities. And in the summer, they do home groups and meals. But the highlight of the year, every year, is what we now call Grace Gala. I have to tell you, I am so thankful this year that we had so many of you who stepped up and volunteered, even many of you admittedly stepping outside of your comfort zone to do things you couldn’t imagine yourself doing. Can I let you in on a secret? I am always more than a bit anxious when Grace Gala rolls around and I know that I’m going to be a buddy. What if I don’t know what to do with my guest? What if I mess it up? What if I say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing? What if, what if, what if…? And every year, God is faithful when you and I just show up to love people that others ignore. There is one young man, and I was his buddy probably four years ago, but he comes every year and when he sees me he lights up. I saw him this year in the line for the party bus, and he yells out (like he does every year), “Hi, buddy!” And he’ll tell others, “That’s my buddy.” Now, I don’t think I did anything special for or with him. I just showed up and tried my best to show the love of Jesus. That’s all it takes. Jesus calls us to love the people that are often unseen, and I thought you might like to take a look at what that looked like this year. Let’s see what this year’s Grace Gala looked like.

VIDEO: Grace Gala 2023

I am thankful for the many, many community partnerships and volunteers we have that come in literally from all over the area to help with Grace Gala. But do you know I dream of? For Jess not to have to stand up here for several weeks begging for people to volunteer because so many in the church have stepped up, all because we are determined to love the ones that others don’t see. There is a marvelous story in Luke 7, a variation of the story we looked at a few weeks ago when Jesus is anointed with oil. In Luke’s telling of it, the woman is “a sinful woman,” and he is at the home of a Pharisee named Simon. The woman enters the dinner crying, her tears falling on Jesus’ feet. She begins to wipe his feet with her hair, then pours perfume on his feet to anoint him. And Simon, the Pharisee, the one concerned with holiness and purity and right things, says to himself (and in Luke’s Gospel, whenever someone says something to themselves, it’s a bad sign), “He shouldn’t let such a sinful woman touch him!” (Luke 7:39, my paraphrase). Jesus then gives Simon a whole lesson I don’t have time to get into today, but he asks Simon a question we all need to hear. He says, “Do you see this woman?” Do you see her? She is not a sinner. She may have done some sinful things, but she is not a sinner. She is a child of God, loved by God and she is someone who ought to be loved by Simon, and by us. When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor,” he included the ones we tend to not even see. So let’s open our eyes. Let’s see them. Let’s really see them.

Once Jesus gives his answer to the teacher of the law, the lawyer affirms what Jesus has said. He even says that what Jesus proposes as the most important commandment is “more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices” (12:33). Now, I want you to get the importance of what he’s saying here. That would be like a banker saying something was more important than money. Or a realtor saying something is more important than houses. Or a teacher saying something is more important than knowledge. For a teacher of the law, so much of his life revolved around understanding all the offerings and sacrifices, all the things that were supposed to help in making you right with God. For this lawyer to put all that aside, centuries of tradition and, really, the center of his faith—this is a big deal. But this guy understands what the prophet Samuel told King Saul long before: “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:22). He has learned the truth of what God said through the prophet Hosea: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). And so to this lawyer, Jesus says, “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (12:34). You are not far from being who God wants you to be, if you can learn to love God and love people. That’s why this is such a vital, critical part of our vision.

One of the early church fathers, Tertullian, was writing near the end of the second century about what life in the church was like at that time. I’ll close with his words, because I think his words then could and should describe the church today. Tertullian wrote this: “It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a [label] upon us. See, they say, how they love one another, for they themselves are animated by mutual hatred. See, they say about us, how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves would sooner kill.” May that be said of the church in our time as well: “See how they love one another! See how they love the world!” How do we make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world? We love God. And we love people—all people. Let’s pray.