Roger Ray, pastor
April 28, 2013 Easter 5
John 13:34-34
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
Normally, I am long suffering and an absolute paragon of patience.... Don't test me, but I have reached a point where I don't even try to be patient in some of the most basic matters of social ethics. I spent two decades speaking in college classrooms, in church basements and from pulpits trying to explain why, biblically, psychologically, philosophically, medically and socially that we should not be prejudiced against gay people and to be willing to celebrate same sex relationships with the same joy and respect that we afford to heterosexual relationships.
But I am no longer willing to pretend that there is anyone who needs more information or a chance to process all of this. Any remaining prejudice is, in my eyes, just that, prejudice.... It is not respectable, it is not understandable, it is not a matter of opinion any more than we would, in the 21st century, afford such issues as slavery and child labor the luxury of being just a matter of personal opinion. There may have been a time when we needed to be patient with those who needed some time to catch up with reality but that time is surely past. You can choose to remain in ignorant prejudice, that is your individual right, but we don't have to pretend that ignorant prejudice is not ignorant prejudice.
I am not far from the same point about the scourge of gun violence in America.
The recent failure of a watered down gun bill that at least offered some background checks to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists and criminals has shown me that rational thought is no longer a part of the legislative process in our nation.
John Spong has said that it is no longer our responsibility to explain to conservatives why we are not prejudiced against gay people, it is up to them to explain to us why they think they have a right to hold onto their prejudice..... an exercise we recently watched in Supreme Court hearings demonstrating just how vacuous that line of thinking is.
I now feel that rather than engaging in debate about 2nd amendment rights or America's tradition of gun ownership, the burden of proof now should be placed at the feet of gun owners to tell us what they are going to do to dramatically and quickly reduce the gun violence death toll which remains at more than 30,000 deaths per year in the USA.
One guy tried unsuccessfully to blow up an airplane with fewer than 200 people on board by putting a bomb in his shoes and for the past 12 years, millions of people all over the globe have had to take off their shoes every day to be scanned by tax payer supported security guards at airports...... no one died.... There was a threat of death but in the name of security, an army of TSA agents are employed to, in part, xray our shoes.
Since that failed Christmas shoe bomber in 2001, nearly a half a million Americans have died from gunfire, and more than one and a quarter of million more have been wounded and yet our legislators say that there is nothing that can be done and that, to put it in Baskin Robbins terms, is "32 flavors" of stupid. Billions spent to protect us from a shoe bomb that never killed anyone..... nothing to address gun violence that has killed millions...... I'm all out of patience.
I believe in a very rational form of Christianity. I rarely move out of typically secular language to say that something is a spiritual issue but when I mention that there are 30,000 gun deaths every year and a gun advocate gives me that blank "so what" look, I start to wonder if that person has a soul. How can you be a human being and be indifferent about that level of carnage?
I am waiting for the media to tell us where the Boston Marathon bombers got the semi-automatic hand gun they used to murder one policeman and conduct a lengthy shootout with others. No matter what the answer is, however, we would all agree that these two murderers shouldn't have been able to acquire the hand gun they had but before any meaningful regulatory changes can be made, someone has to care, someone has to have a soul, someone has to have a heart......and that does, in fact, make it a spiritual problem.
John tells us that Jesus made love the single defining aspect of what it meant to be a Christian, to be a religious, a spiritual person. Love, not the feeling of being thrilled or smitten.... Not the urges of sexual appetite.... Not even the more mysterious love we have for our infant children that makes it possible for us to perpetuate our species.
The love we see in this context is the spiritual dimension that makes us care about children in Nicaragua who have no shoes, that makes it possible for us to be concerned about 15,000 of those gun deaths that are suicides and all the thousands that are the result of domestic disputes or stupid accidents. Others may be able to write off people who stay in bad relationships, or who abuse drugs, alcohol or who are addicted to violence. We care about them, not because they are members of our family but because they are humans.
It is not an easy message for people to take in. Think about who in modern history has tried to get people to live together in peace, to end violence and prejudice and discrimination... President Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Medger Evers, MalcolmX, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Oscar Romero....all tried to heal the division of the north and the south, Hindus and Muslims, Blacks and Whites, the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak. It might also be worth noting how the world reacted to each of these great leaders..... they were all shot and killed with a gun...... how might history have been different if guns had not been available to those murderers?
For the past 35 years I have heard religious people asking, "Who is the Martin Luther King of this generation?" No one has ever had a good answer for that question but I have to wonder if this generation's Martin Luther King just got shot before he or she got to start preaching. King was only 39 years old when he was murdered by James Earl Ray. 39! What were you doing when you were 39? I was still trying to figure life out..... I hadn't even hit my stride as a preacher until I was a decade older than King lived to be.
What if one of those children shot at Sandy Hook Elementary was our next great leader? What if that little girl who went to hear Gabby Gifford speaking in a grocery store parking lot in Arizona, 9 year-old Christina Taylor Green..... what if she was going to be our next great leader before she was shot and killed? Or what if it might have been Veronica Mosier, killed at age 6 in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado last summer?
Against this backdrop, in this special place, set aside for our community gatherings to hear the ancient words of our sacred texts, the voice of Jesus says, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. This is how the world will know that you are my followers, when they see how you love one another."
I'm just saying that there is not enough love going on..... not enough of the real thing..... the kind of love that cares about the stranger, that values human life, that sacrifices to make the world less violent, more safe, more sane.
The drum beat of selfishness and violence in our world can cause us to become so cynical that we quit caring, so defeated that we stop trying, so disgusted that we just give up, circle the wagons, protect ourselves, seek diversion in entertainment, food and alcohol...... we can become more inclined to quietly take our anti-depressants than to keep fighting for change.
I don't know if John can ever be taken literally but I can understand why he says this in language that is not intended to persuade or invite or simply encourage...... A new commandment I give to you..... that's strong..... liberals don't like to be told what to do..... we don't use imperial language in our church..... we don't call Jesus "Lord," we don't celebrate "Christ the King".... We don't much go in for the language of dominance or obedience so I think we should pay attention when the language of the text steps across the line a bit....
A new commandment I give to you, that you love.... And you don't stop loving.... You don't let cynicism paralyze your noble loving hearts.... You don't let the repeated victories of dark oppression and violence make you retreat..... I command that you love.... Love the stranger.... Love the person you have never met..... those people on Face Book.... They are not really your "friends" unless you are willing to put your flesh into the bargain.
I know how many people have "liked" our church's face book page but no one is going to take that seriously if they don't see how we love one another.
Lord deliver us from shallow religion.... From using the language of friendship and love too easily.... Save us from a self-protecting and facile society that acquiesces to silence in the face of prejudice and violence.
We are lovers in a dangerous time and that is why I add my voice to the voice of the poet who calls us to keep kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. Violence and prejudice is strong and it can be lethal and frightening but in the end, the best lover always wins.
