The
atmosphere was tense, but controlled. Police dressed in riot gear and armed
with tear gas protected a small group of Klansmen in white robes and conical
hoods. Thomas was with a group of anti-KKK demonstrators on the other side of a
specially-erected fence.
Then
a shout, "There's a Klansman in the crowd."
They
turned around to see a white, middle-aged man wearing a Confederate flag
T-shirt and Nazi tatoos on his arms. He tried to walk away from them, but the
protesters, including Thomas, followed. His
clothes and tattoos represented exactly what they had come to resist.
There
were shouts of "Kill the Nazi" and the man began to run - but he was
knocked to the ground. A group surrounded him, kicking him and hitting him with
the wooden sticks. Mob mentality had
taken over. Thomas, in that moment in time, knew that someone had to step out
of the pack and say, 'This isn't right.'"
So the black, female teenager, threw herself on top of a man she did not
know and shielded him from the blows.
(excerpt
from a BBC report - https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24653643)
This
is one of those Sundays when all four of our readings are interwoven to support
one of the fundamental teachings of Jesus…
“love one another as I have loved you”
1.
There’s the story
of Peter’s confrontation with the “believers” in Jerusalem, where he shares
God’s declaration on inclusiveness… “What God has made clean, you must not call
profane.”
2.
And the Psalm
acknowledging that the sun and the moon, the monsters of the deep , the cattle
and the birds, and even the kings and princes, men and women, young and old –
all are to stand and praise God with one voice
3.
that wonderful
reading from Revelation where we are reminded of the totality of God’s
presence, the futility of our efforts at control or to perpetuate our own small
worlds in the face of God’s New Creation,
4.
and finally this
reading from John, offering his teaching to the disciples and to us - on what
it means to grasp the expansiveness and the inclusiveness of God’s love as
shown thru Jesus’ life.
It
is a high bar to which Jesus’ life and ministry of love calls us. These
are rich lessons that beg to be preached.
They are fundamental to our theology, the core of our faith. And if we are honest with ourselves they
speak of one of the most elusive qualities of being a Christian – they call us
to widen our understanding of who is loved by God and who God desires that we
love. The story I recounted of the 18
year old black activist woman laying her body across a man is a tangible living
out of the instruction to love one another.
I’ll admit that doubts creep into my mind about whether or not he would have done the same for her. Stretching one’s thinking to embrace - with love - those with whom we vehemently disagree or those who we find to be despicable is just as hard for me as it is for anyone else. My prayer at the end of the mass for God to intervene and to bless those who we struggle to love is a real life, personal prayer. The psalmist writes: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.”
From
the day we slip into this world – perhaps from the day we are conceived – we
compare ourselves to others. Am I as
handsome as he is? Is my skin as blemish
free as hers? How can I outmaneuver him
so that I will get that high paying job?
He/she is not as smart/pretty/ upright/motivated, loved/hated as I am
because he/she is a man/woman, black/white, native/immigrant, straight/gay, trans/cis,
legal/illegal, educated/or not. You pick
the appropriate X versus Y category. I
don’t care who you are or how liberal or enlightened we think ourselves to be -
every time you or I walk into a room, we size ourselves up against everyone
else – physically, emotionally, financially, intellectually. We are self-centric organisms. Anyone or anything that does not fit into our
own personal scheme of things becomes the “other”, the “stranger”.
And there lies the difficulty, because when we see all that is around us from the paradigm of “me me me” then it is really very difficult for us to understand ourselves to be made in God’s image. Instead we see God through our own image and that makes it really really difficult to understand the magnitude of the love that God feels for you or for me. If I cannot see the face of God in those who are different from me, then I have narrowed my vision of who God is. I can only know God partially – i.e. that part that is like me. I’m gonna say that again… If I cannot see the face of God in those who are different from me, then I have narrowed my vision of who God is. I can only know God partially – i.e. that part that is like me. I do not know the part of God that is reflected in the homeless man, the immigrant, the teenage mother, the addict, the perfectly dressed Harvard graduate in the corner office, the trans person, the teen with pink hair and tattoos, or the woman who seems to have everything going for her, perhaps even the other people in this room. Refusing to let go of preconceptions and misconceptions of stranger makes it very easy to let anger and hatred be our first response to difference.
In the first century the believers in Jerusalem questioned whether or not the Gentiles were deserving of God’s love and grace. Peter answered that question for 1st C Palestinian Jews. Today there are so many people who are being singled out for verbal and physical abuse, caught up in wholesale bombing and starvation, maligned and attacked with threats to freedom and prosperity – honestly threats to their very existence. Seeing the suffering taking place tears at our faith and shakes us out of those places where God’s image can be narrowed and limited by our fear of the stranger.
T
his “new” commandment that Jesus gives us today is not about what we believe to be true or what our image of God might be. This commandment is about how we live with one another and how our love is reflective of God’s love for us. It’s not about Christian belief it is about Christian praxis. And the newness is that the source of the love is Jesus Christ. When we open ourselves up to the deeply penetrating love of Christ and let it take hold of all that we do and say, then we can begin to appreciate how God’s love takes all of our differences and makes them holy and good. Breathe in the difference. Revel in the power of God’s hand at work through each of us. We can’t stop it no matter how much we dig in our heals and want God to love us better than those strange people next door. It just doesn’t work that way. Thanks be to God. Amen
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