Scripture:
Matthew 5:38-48
Preached 02/23/2014
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A Great Dane in Canada found an orphaned baby fawn near the house, and took charge of raising it till it was old enough to go back to the forest – but the grown deer came back for tender reunions every now and then.
A
homeless dog in Florida found its way to a farm that rehabilitated abused
horses, and took one particularly ill and beaten horse into its heart. Together, they dug a hole under the fence
that separated them, so the dog could lie near the horse and guard it, a
relationship that lasted till the horse died, and then the dog accompanied the
horse to its grave.
A
donkey in England belonged to a woman who also had a sheep she had
rescued. One day a pit bull came into
the yard and went for the sheep, sinking its teeth into the sheep’s neck. The woman came running to the sheep’s frantic
cries, in time to see the donkey charge the scene and bite the pit bull in the
neck, hanging on till the dog let go. It
took a lot of nursing to save the sheep, and Dotty the donkey stayed by her
side for the months of healing.
Owen,
a baby hippo orphaned by the Asian Tsunami, chose Mzee, a 130 year old male
giant tortoise for a surrogate mom when he arrived at the animal park in
Kenya. It was a miracle Owen survived
when his entire pod was drowned. It was
a miracle Mzee stepped up to mothering, when he was male, ancient, and from a
species that does not nurture its young.
For a year and a half they were inseparable, and Mzee taught Owen how to
be a fine tortoise, swimming, eating vegetation along the shore, and sleeping
in the sun.[i][ii]
Okay,
before we all go into diabetic shock from all this sweetness, I’ve got to stop. This kind of love—these animal friends, can
be almost unbearably sweet. And it’s
love that Jesus talks to us about this morning, in this section of the Sermon
on the Mount. Love your neighbor, he
says. Aww.
It
gives us warm fuzzy feelings, doesn’t it?
Kind of like those cute animal friend pictures. But of course, as you already heard and I
already reminded you, Jesus keeps going, on to what is one of the most
difficult few verses in the bible. Love
your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. Yeah, that just got a whole lot harder. In fact, it seems almost impossible. Especially when we get to the very last
verse. Anyone remember the last
one? “Be perfect, therefore, as your
heavenly Father (or mother!) is perfect.”
Umm- yeah. Sounds pretty
impossible to me.
This
is one of those moments where I wonder a bit if Jesus really knew what he was
asking his followers to do, and I bet they had the same wondering too. Maybe, just maybe the Son of God can do
this. But us, normal people, love
neighbors and enemies and people who persecute us? That’s kind of nuts, right? Jesus’ call for
us to love seems to fly in the face of reality. There are a million reasons
that loving our neighbor, our enemy, and everyone in between just won’t
work.
Jesus
clearly doesn’t understand the conundrum of what he’s asking us to do.
And if you
notice, Jesus doesn’t even seem to be too interested in the difficulties,
either. Jesus just says to love. Since we, as Christians, claim to follow this
Jesus guy, who by the way, seems to be asking more radical things of us every
week, maybe we should take our cue from Jesus.
So instead of dwelling on all the reasons it’s hard to love others, we
can look at all the ways it is possible to love across boundaries.
For example, we could look back to
those cute animal pictures. You didn’t
think we were done with those, did you?
You knew I wasn’t going to leave them alone. As adorable as those animal pictures are,
they’re not false, saccharine sweetness.
They’re actually great examples of loving across difficult boundaries.
Back to the first picture, the Great
Dane and the baby deer. The Great Dane
is a carnivore, the deer a vegetarian.
I’ve already seen this kind of cross-dietary love happen here at
Calvary, so you’re doing some of this loving the “other” stuff already, and
maybe didn’t notice. But this has a
further implication—different mindsets, different values and beliefs like those
reflected in dietary choices can keep us from loving others. But if these animals can figure out how to
get past it, so can we. The deer and the
Great Dane also have wildly different cultures, the deer living in a forest, and
the Great Dane living in the house—meaning that love across living situations,
such as loving and caring for the homeless—is indeed possible.
The horse and the dog are a
wonderful example of loving in spite of barriers. Perhaps our own woundedness keeps us from
loving others—we are afraid of getting hurt, of failing in our endeavors, or of
being rejected. The horse and the dog
had both been abused, and yet loved one another anyway. If they can do it, so can we. Perhaps
physical barriers—like the walls of this church, the walls of our houses, or
the largely racially segregated neighborhoods in St. Louis keep us from loving
some of our brothers and sisters. But,
if a dog and a horse can dig a hole under a fence, so can we.
Maybe it’s fear that keeps us from
loving others. Maybe it’s fear for our
own safety, going somewhere we normally wouldn’t and engaging with people who
frighten us somehow. But the donkey and
the sheep remind us that this doesn’t have to stop us. We can go into neighborhoods, countries, and
situations where violence is rife because sometimes that’s where love leads us,
if we let it. If a donkey can take on a pit bull for a sheep, we can certainly
face our fears for the sake of loving our brothers and sisters whose lives and
safety are in danger.
I’ll be honest with this last
one—it’s a concern I’ve heard voiced here before. Maybe we think we can’t love our neighbors
and our enemies and everyone in between because of our age. Maybe it’s because we’re too old, and feel
like we’re tired with nothing left to give.
Maybe it’s because we’re too young, and we feel like we’re too busy or
don’t know enough. But seriously, if a
102 year old tortoise can nurture a orphaned hippopotamus, we too, regardless
of age, can offer love in the form of nurture, teaching, and support to those
who need it in our midst.
So
maybe, instead of getting hung up on who we can’t or why we can’t love, we can
take a cue from those animals we saw earlier.
Even though those animal friends may seem saccharine at first, just like
Jesus words to us to love one another may seem saccharine at first, they’re
not. Those animals have messy history,
as groups, with loving one another as well.
They have all these barriers they have to cross and social norms to
break. They don’t come from the same
background. They have different languages,
so to speak. They live in different
ways, they eat different things, and some of them have been known to eat others
of them. And yet, they didn’t let any of that stop them from loving.
And
if those animals can do it, perhaps it’s possible that we can actually do it
too. Like the Great Dane and the little
fawn, we can ignore color, race, and cultural expectations, and nurture and be
nurtured by those very different from us.
Even if, like the homeless dog and the abused horse, we have a lot of
pain in our past and scars in our present, we can still love. And like the same horse and dog, we can get
past any barriers that anyone puts between us and anyone else. Like Dotty the donkey, we can be love in
action, even if it requires us to step into anxiety producing situations. We can step in to love our brothers and
sisters who are being hurt, oppressed, or cast aside. Even if we think we’re too old, or can’t care
enough, like Mzee the tortoise, we can still love. Even if we feel vulnerable, like Owen the
baby hippo, we can still love,
We
can get past all the reasons that we can’t love, and just love anyway. After all, this is what we were created to do,
to love. Love is in our innermost being,
and it’s part of every bit of who we are.
This is actually what Jesus is
reminding us when he tells us to be perfect as God is perfect. The Greek word used in the text here is from
the same stem as the Greek word telos, which means goal, end, or ultimate
purpose. The sense of the word isn’t
about never making a mistake. The real
sense of the word is to become what is intended, or to accomplish one’s God
given purpose. Jesus is telling us here
to live out our God created identity as the beloved children of God.
We
don’t have to stay hung up on all the reasons we can’t love, because we
can. It’s not impossible. Love is who we are created to be and what we
are created to do. Just like we’ve now
all seen those animals who loved their friends across barriers, we’ve all seen
unlikely love happen in our own lives as well.
Maybe it looks like turning the other cheek when someone insults or
hurts us. Maybe it looks like giving,
and giving, and giving to those in need.
Maybe it looks like going above and beyond when you are asked to do
something for someone else. Or maybe it
looks like an unlikely friendship or partnership, one that others on the
outside may stare at in wonder and awe.
Whatever this unlikely love looks like, know that it’s what you’ve been called to do, and who you’ve been called to be. You were lovingly made in God’s image, created to love others as God loves you. So go from here, and be who you were created to be. You are God’s beloved and loving child. Be who you are created to be. Amen.
