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6/22/08

Love Wins.

“Love Wins.”  It’s a bumper sticker I’ve seen everywhere!  It’s short, sweet, and to the point.  But it also left me with more questions than answers.  It’s just a subject and a verb.  But the subject is open to interpretation.  What kind of love?  Whose love?  Love for whom?  Sure, there are good kinds of love… but we can certainly love bad things too, can’t we?  And the verb, win?  When?  When will it win?  Does it always win?  Who is love fighting against?  I didn’t know if this was a Christian bumper sticker, or political, or new age, or Buddhist, or what it was.  So I went where everyone nowadays goes to find out about stuff – my local library.  No seriously – the library’s great – but I went to the Internet.

And there I found out that the “Love Wins” ministry is indeed a Christian ministry founded just down the road a bit, in Jenison, originally with Mars Hill Church, even though they’re no longer affiliated with that church.  It’s based on Matthew 22:37&39.  “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ^{  39}And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”  Those are a couple great verses, aren’t they?  I guess if you want to sum up those two verses, which are already a summary of the whole law, “Love Wins” is a pretty good summary.  Love God.  Love Others.  Then love yourself.  And if you read the end of the book, the end of the Bible, you find that in the end, love does win!

Love Wins.  It’s really an encouraging message for a Christian, isn’t it?  We’re called to love, and we already know how it’s going to end.  We, through the grace of God, are going to win!  But that having been said, today’s passage throws a bit of a wrench into the works.  The passage is Matthew 10.  I invite you to read it along with me or just listen as I read.

“¹He (that is Jesus) called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.

² These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; ³ Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; ⁴ Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

⁵ These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans.  ⁶ Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.  ⁷ As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’  ⁸ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons.  Freely you have received, freely give.  ⁹ Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts; ¹⁰ take no bag for the journey, or extra tunic, or sandals or a staff; for the worker is worth his keep.

¹¹ “Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person there and stay at his house until you leave.  ¹² As you enter the home, give it your greeting.  ¹³ If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you.  ¹⁴ If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town.  ¹⁵ I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”

So far not too bad, right?  Jesus sends out the twelve.  First just to the Jews, but thankfully for us the message later went to the Gentiles too.  But anyway, Jesus gave some great ways to show love!  They’re supposed to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleans leprosy, drive out daemons!  Pretty exciting stuff!  Who wouldn’t be excited about a love that could do those things?!  They’re not supposed to have to worry about material things.  All of that is supposed to be provided for them by the people.  You only have to do ministry among the people who welcome you in!  Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?  This love thing seems to be going pretty well.  But then let’s continue reading.

^“16 I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.  Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.

¹⁷ “Be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local councils and flog you in their synagogues.  ¹⁸ On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles.  ¹⁹ But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it.  At that time you will be given what to say, ²⁰ for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

²¹ “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.  ²² All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.  ²³ When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another.  I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”

Whoa!  Wait a minute.  I thought love wins.  What’s going on here?  Has Jesus lost his mind?  He told us to love.  Everyone loves love, right?  What could anyone have against a message of love that heals the sick and raises the dead?  What’s this about being on your guard?  Being flogged?  Being arrested?  Brothers betraying each other to death?  Children having their parents put to death?  All people hating us?  Where’s the love?  Where’s the warm touchy feely feelings?  I liked that stuff better!  I want to hear that love wins!  But Jesus continues in verse 26.

²⁶ “So do not be afraid of them.  There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.  ²⁷ What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs.  ²⁸ Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.  ²⁹ Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.  ³⁰ And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  ³¹ So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

³² “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.  ³³ But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.

³⁴ “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth.  I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  ³⁵ For I have come to turn

“‘a man against his father,

a daughter against her mother,

a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—

³⁶ a man’s enemies will be the members of his own

household.’

³⁷ “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; ³⁸ and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  ³⁹ Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

This is almost too much.  What could Jesus possible be talking about?  Later in Matthew Jesus is telling us that love is the ultimate law, but here he’s turning sons against fathers and daughters against sons.  What’s going on here?

Well, maybe it would be helpful to step back from this for a minute to think about what it is that Jesus is saying in this rather bizarre passage.  As we said earlier, Love Wins is a pretty ambiguous thing to say.  Maybe the reason “Love Wins” and Matthew 10 seem to be in such stark contrast to each other is because some of the assumptions we make when we say “Love Wins” are incorrect assumptions.

So let’s start with the word love.  Do you ever feel like love is a word that has so many meanings today that it almost has no meaning at all?  I do.  I can love things.  I can love people.  I can do almost anything in the name of love.  Love has almost come to mean any warm, fuzzy emotion felt towards something.  If a chair at home makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, I can love the chair.  If I do something for some person and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, I must love that person.  And if what I believe makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, then I love what I believe.

On the flip side of that coin, if a chair I have at home isn’t warm and fuzzy, even though it may be better for my posture, I can hate that chair.  And if I do something for someone that doesn’t make both him and me feel warm and fuzzy inside, then what I did must have been unkind.  And if what I believe doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy inside, I can toss it aside for something that will. 

We may not think about love all that often, but isn’t this how many of us live?  Isn’t this what our culture teaches is love?  Well, if this is love, and God is love, and Jesus told us to love God, others, and ourselves, and love wins, then something must be wrong with this understanding of love because of what Matthew 10 says.  It sure sounds like if I’m a disciple of Jesus, I’m not always going to feel warm and fuzzy inside and those whom I try to love aren’t always going to feel warm and fuzzy inside either.  Maybe feeling warm and fuzzy isn’t the same thing as feeling love.

Society likes warm and fuzzy, especially in today’s world.  With travel easier than it’s ever been and with the internet allowing us to connect to ideas all over the world, different beliefs and ideas are coming in contact with one another more than perhaps ever before.  It used to be that we could pretty much assume that everyone around us believed pretty much everything we believed.  Sure, you knew there were Hindus and Mormons and New Agers and Muslims, but they all lived somewhere else far away.  You sent missionaries to work with people like that.  Nobody was real sure how they worked with those people, but we knew they did… we gave money once a month so that they could.  But things have changed now.  You may work with a Hindu.  You may live around the corner from a Jehovah’s Witness.  Your son may go to school with a New Ager.  And you may read a website written by a Atheist when you go home.  We’re inundated with new and different ideas from every corner of the world… the only thing is we don’t have to go to the corners of the world anymore to hear or read about those ideas.

So what should we do when we encounter these other ideas?  Well, from my experience, what many of us do is mix together a little bit of what God told us to do and a little bit of what culture tells us to do.  First, God.  God tells us to love.  OK, that sounds good.  Second, culture.  Culture tells us to love is a warm, fuzzy feeling.  That sounds good too.  So what does that mean practically?  That means that when I have an encounter with someone with a different belief, I want to leave that encounter with both me and the other person having warm, fuzzy feelings.  So I don’t say anything to offend the other person, especially if she doesn’t say anything to offend me.

But then I read Matthew and wonder why it is that I never get the kind of reaction Jesus talked about.  Why am I never being beaten or arrested for what I believe?  Why am I not turning mothers against daughters and sons against fathers?  Well, one answer is because we live in a free country… and that’s true… and we should be thankful for that.  But do we EVER receive ANY resistance to our beliefs?  Or is everyone fine letting us believe what we want to believe, just as long as it doesn’t interfere with what they believe.

The gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ and his love, should naturally bring up resistance.  The gospel message says, “God forgives you because he sent a Savior.”  Well, if I’m telling you you’re forgiven and that you needed a Savior, I’m also implicitly telling you there was something wrong with you.  I don’t know about you, but when someone tells me there’s something wrong with me, it doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy, even if it is said to me in love.  It makes me feel uncomfortable.  It means I need to change… and change isn’t comfortable.  But telling someone they need to change is sometimes the most loving thing you can do.

Parenting my daughter is an example of this.  The other day she wanted to play with a steak knife she saw on the counter in the worse way.  I sternly told her “no.”  Let me tell you, she was not feeling warm and fuzzy right about then.  She threw a temper tantrum.  I was not letting her do what she wanted to do.  I was keeping her from doing what I knew, in time, would be a harmful activity.  But it was love that was keeping me from letting her play with that knife.

And that brings us to the verb of “Love Wins.”  For a proper understanding of that we not only need God’s understanding of Love, but we also need to think of what time frame God is thinking of.  We can tell people that the true God is a loving, forgiving God all day long, and so long as we’re not too specific as to what they’re being forgiven from, most people will feel pretty warm and fuzzy from this.  It’s about like me telling my daughter that kitchen utensils are useful and she can use them as she sees fit.  She would love this.  It would make her feel warm and fuzzy.  She could play with spoons and forks and knives.  Everyone wins in the short term when no one offends anyone.  Everyone feels good much like my daughter feels good playing with the spoons and the forks and the knives, but what would happen after she played with a steak knife for a while?  Eventually she’d get cut.  She’d get hurt.  There will come a day when Jesus will return and he will judge between those who trusted in his salvation and those who tried some other means of salvation.  As verses 32 and 33 say,  ³² “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.  ³³ But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.”  That’s the end of the game.  That’s when love wins.

So what can we take from this passage?  What can we take from this message?  “Love Wins.”  It’s a great message, but it takes a little fleshing out.  Love won’t always make me or you feel warm or fuzzy – sometimes it may even be offensive.  Sometimes you might need to confront someone – or someone may need to confront you – and say, “God’s willing to forgive you, but now let’s talk about what needs forgiving.”  Let’s talk about what sin is and what’s sin in your life.  Let’s talk about what’s sin in my life.  Let’s talk about how life ends if we keep living in our sin.  It may be an uncomfortable conversation, but in the end, you will have both run in such a way as to win the prize of eternal life.  ‘Cause in the end, “Love Wins.”

In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.