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A Sermon Delivered at First Christian
Church Stockton Exodus 3:1-15, Matthew 16:21-28, Romans 12:9-21 Let love be genuine; hate
what is evil, hold fast to what is good;
Love one another with
mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.
Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice
in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of
the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Bless those who persecute
you; bless and do not curse them.
Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
Live in harmony with one
another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to
be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is
noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you,
live peaceably with all. Beloved, never
avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is
written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord."
No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them
something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on
their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Please don’t tell anyone that you heard this from me. If you do I will categorically deny it. It is not to be repeated outside of this room, and if you do you will be infested with the fleas of a thousand camels. It may come as a bit of a shock to you so you may want to sit down with both feet on the floor. I wish God had created a different world. I think God must have miscalculated all of this. Maybe God should have consulted with Walt Disney before creating the universe with all of the evil and chaos that runs amok on every continent. Yes, I do wish God had created a Disneyesque world where we all sing “It’s A Small World After All.” Please do not tell anyone I said that. I don’t know about you
but I am finding it increasingly difficult to “love my enemies and do
good to and pray for those that persecute me”.
How I long to live and dwell in Fantasy Land where all of God’s
children sing with Michael Jackson “We are the World”, and to gather
around the evening campfire joining hands and singing “Kum ba yah”.
Do you suppose that we have
to love all of our enemies?
Can we decide, using some common sense and moral reasoning, which
enemies we will love and which ones we can hate?
It seems reasonable, don’t you think, that we can hate Osama bin
Laden, suicide bombers in Palestine, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq?
Certainly God doesn’t mean that we should love them.
And while we are drawing lines of hate and love, can’t we add the
thieves at Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, and other corporate moguls who have
stolen millions of investor dollars?
And what about the Zionist who refuse to allow Palestinians to live
freely in their homeland? And
what about PG&E, Governor
Davis, former President Clinton, country music singers, racists, illegal
aliens, owners of SUV’s, environmentalists, and those who refuse to
learn our language? We
can’t love all of our enemies, can we?
Jesus said “Love your
enemies”. Paul said
“Bless them”. Both of
them said “feed them” and “give them something to drink”.
But did Jesus and Paul have any notion how evil our enemies would
be here in the 21st century?
Could Jesus have known about terrorist groups flying
passenger-filled airliners into the World Trade Center on 9/11?
Could Paul have known about chemical weapons and atomic bombs
capable of wiping out millions? Jesus
and Paul, Gandhi and Martin Luther King were just naïve, right? I might be wrong, but it
seems to me that Jesus knew about brutal regimes and evil empires long
before Al-Qa'ida and
Islamic Terrorists. Didn’t Herod order the murder of all male children under
age 2 when Jesus was born? Hadn’t
Israel been occupied by the Roman government, placing Caesar’s name on
all coins, a graven image to the Jews?
Was not Israel strewn with crosses with Jews nailed to them for
trying to subvert Roman rule? When
Jesus talked about loving his enemies, I can imagine him looking into the
eyes of the men nailing him to the cross and offering to them his
forgiveness-“Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The apostle Paul would have
been familiar with Caligula, Roman emperor from 37-41 AD, about the time
Paul became a Jewish follower of Jesus.
It could be argued that Caligula was the cruelest despot in all
history. He was so sensitive about his baldness that it became a
capital offense for anyone to look down from a high place as Caligula
passed by. Sometimes he
ordered those with a fine head of hair to be shaved. Caligula demanded that he
be worshipped as a god. He set up a special temple with a life-sized
statue of himself in gold, which was dressed each day in clothing such as
he wore himself. He claimed fellowship with the gods as his equals,
identifying himself in particular with Jupiter, but also with female gods
like Juno, Diana or Venus. Standing near the image of Jupiter, Caligula
once asked the actor Apelles whether Jupiter or Caligula were greater.
When Apelles hesitated, Caligula had him cut to pieces with the whip. He
justified himself by saying: "Remember that I have the power to do
anything to anyone." He
was later murdered by his own guards. Emperor Nero fit nicely
into Caligula’s shoes. During
Paul’s imprisonment, much of Rome was destroyed by a fire.
Nero, always a man desperate to be popular, looked for scapegoats
on whom the fire could be blamed. He found it in an obscure new religious
sect, the Christians. And so many Christians were arrested and thrown to
the wild beasts in the circus, or they were crucified on crosses or
beheaded. Many of them were also burned to death at night, serving as
'lighting' in Nero's gardens, while Nero mingled among the watching
crowds. It is this brutal
persecution which immortalized Nero as the first Antichrist in the
eyes of the Christian church. It
was Nero who ordered the beheading of Paul.
Do you suppose Paul had Nero or Caligula in mind when he said
“Love your enemies, and do good to those who persecute you?”
So now you see why I think
God must have made some mistake in creating this world. There is just too much hate and not enough love.
Only in some utopian place would the idea of loving one’s enemies
do any good. And the idea of
not repaying evil for evil or ever seeking vengeance would leave us
defenseless. How can I love
someone whom my heart despises? Maybe that is the problem.
We are not called to love them with our hearts.
That is impossible. We
are not asked to feel romantic about them; that would be absurd.
What we are called to do is to act in love toward them.
This is not sentimental love, but love in action, love in deed.
This kind of love is patient and unconditional, willing to suffer
in order to bring about reconciliation.
According to Paul, doing good eventually will overcome all evil. True harmony cannot be
found at Disneyland. It can only be seen in a vision of God’s Kingdom,
that world ruled by Christ in which the wolf shall live with the lamb, the
leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the many "wild animals"
of the Christian community shall dwell together in peace Our task as a
church is to dream of that kingdom, to pray for it, to work toward it, and
to open our hearts to it. The church was formed in
the midst of the axis of evil, surrounded by terrorists no less evil than
those today. And in stark
contrast to that evil is the cross, our emblem of love, our shield against
violence, our message of hope. I
may be naïve, and I may be wrong, but this is what I believe.
It is our only hope for true peace.
Michael Malone
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