Love My Who?

Sermon: January 26, 1997

Do you have any enemies? How about you? Or you? I’m not talking about abstractions. I’m talking about people you know. Is any of you bold enough to admit to having an enemy? By a show of hands, who has no enemies? Interesting. No enemies, for the most part. At least none that we’ll admit to.

Thinking about enemies makes me think about lists. Most of us remember when the most powerful political figure in the world compiled an enemies list. Whew! Think of that! An enemies list.

Anyway, let’s drop enemies for a minute and think about other kinds of list-making. There is a management technique in which the manager must place each person in his or her department on a single list in rank order of his or her value to the company. The rater may not equivocate or give ties -- each person is placed above or below everybody else. The final product is a list.

Without debating the merits of such a list, I invite you to think for a minute about making such a list of everybody you have ever known personally. We know too many people to do the whole list right now, but think for a minute about your “top five” -- the five people you prefer to everybody else, or who mean the most to you, or with whom you would rather spend time. I’m not so concerned about your criteria, so long as you can start to compile the top of that list.

Close your eyes for a minute, and think of 2 or 3 people from the top of your list. Bring their pictures to your mind. Whisper their names out loud. Notice your feelings. Anybody care to share your feelings? How about warmth? An urge to smile? Tenderness? Love? What should we call these folks? How about the Beloved?

OK, now that you have the idea about this list, I want to move your attention to the bottom of the list. Think of someone you don’t like, perhaps even someone who wishes you ill. Now, is there anyone you’d put lower on that list? Remember, this is a list compiled from all the people you know. No abstractions allowed. Real people in your real life. Who has come up with the bottom five? How about your bottom three? How about the bottom one? Has anybody not come up with anyone for your bottom 10?

Now, please close your eyes again. Bring to mind a picture of 2 or 3 members of the bottom of your list. Whisper their names out loud. Just look at them, one at a time, and notice the feelings you are experiencing as you look at them. Does anyone care to share what feelings you have? How about hate? Dislike? Fear? Are you uncomfortable? Is there a tightening in your gut? Does anyone have any ideas about what to call these people? Is there a name for this group of unpleasant folk? Anybody? Well, since these folks make us feel a little grim, let’s call them the Grims? Can we agree on that as a name, the Grims?

OK, you can open your eyes. Quite a list, eh? This list can alter how you feel, depending on what part of the list you look at -- the Beloved, or the Grims. Pretty powerful, this list-making.

There is a problem with this list-making, however. Christ rejects it out of hand. Let’s turn to Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?”

But wait a minute, you may be saying. He didn’t say a thing about lists. Just enemies.

Love your enemies.

But you don’t have any enemies. You are the enlightened sons and daughters of the late 20th Century. Few of us admit to having such a thing as an enemy. Oh, sure, we’ll admit to theoretical or impersonal enemies. But we are reluctant to denote people as enemies if we know them. But Christ seemed to be talking not about abstractions, but real people, real enemies. So, is there any juice for us in Christ’s admonition? Or are his words dated, meant for another people, another time, another continent?

Maybe it’s the word that’s the problem. Let’s see, in the absence of enemies, who do we have? Well, we have the Grims. Not really enemies, but I guess they are as good as we can come up with.

Love your Grims.

Close you eyes again, bring the bottom of your list back to mind. The Grims.

Love your Grims.

LOVE your Grims.

What do you mean, “Love your Grims”? Let’s review a few definitions of love to get a clue. First, let’s see what Webster has to say: “A deep and tender feeling of affection for or attachment or devotion to a person or persons.”

And of course, our friend Paul had a few words on the subject in case we need more detail: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

OK, let’s test it out. Pick any of the members of your Grim list, and see if you feel “a deep and tender feeling of affection for or attachment or devotion to” that person. Are you patient and kind with this person, or are you irritable and resentful? Do you bear all things from this person? Hmmm. Looks like we may have some work to do.

Can Christ really be calling us to love these Unlovables, these creators of pits in our stomachs, these people whom we would just as soon avoid? Raise your hands if you are at all uncomfortable with the notion of loving these people.

Yeah, me, too. Why should I? cries a voice inside. Why should I love these Grims? To a person they have wished or even done me wrong, or harmed the people I have loved.

Well, a friend of mine tells me that he often hears at his daily Alcoholics Anonymous meetings this statement: “Hating someone (or harboring a resentment against them) is like taking poison and hoping the other person gets sick from it.” In the AA arena, resentment is seen as a killer. My friend goes on to write: “Throughout the AA literature it is emphasized that resentments are the chief killer. We drink at those and at the feelings around them more often than anything.”

Is this true just of those addicted to alcohol? How about those among us that are addicted to being right, or to being acknowledged, or to security? Yes, it is for MY sake that I must love this Grim, not for his sake. It is for MY sake that I must forgive, not his. When somebody wrongs us, I mean really wrongs us, we torture ourselves trying to figure out if that person can ever merit our forgiveness. That misses the point. We need to forgive more than they need to be forgiven.

There is something irritating about this that we don’t often talk about. This kind of love reeks of indifference. If we throw away our list of Beloveds and Grims, we become indifferent. We love our conniving co-worker as we love our beloved child. We love the burglar who invaded our home last week as we love our dearest friend.

Ugh. We shudder at this indifference. It just seems wrong. Worse than that, it seems impossible.

And yet, there it is.

Love your Grims.

How? How?

This is the short part of the sermon. I don’t know. I only have a few clues. I’m pretty sure, for starters, that I’m not up to doing it on my own. So long as I reside fully entrenched in my own skin, my own point of view, I am not particularly hopeful about this indifferent love. Somehow, I must capture the Heart of God and make it my own; somehow, I must speak with the Voice of God. My heart, my voice, just aren’t up to it.

Try this, now. Close your eyes. Bring to mind Grim Number One, the head honcho. Notice, but don’t dwell on, this person’s brokenness. Then, do whatever it takes to open your heart, to make it tender and vulnerable. If you are a parent, imagine that this is your child, your hurting, sad, troubled child. Now, notice, but don’t dwell on, all the resentment and anger you have felt for this person. Notice your pain, the pain that comes directly from list-making, from judging. Say out loud to your Grim, “Will you please forgive me?”

Listen carefully, and you will hear, “I forgive you.”

Imagine, now, this person asking for your forgiveness. “I know I have wronged you. Please, will you forgive me?” Now, repeat after me, “I forgive you.” Say it again, “I forgive you.”

What you’ve just heard is the voice of God.