Let love be genuine

from Helen

I want to begin with an Ethopian story. Once upon a time there was a man who had three sons. As he was getting older he was able to see that his death was drawing close. Because of this he divided up all his wealth between his three sons. However, there was one piece of property that he had which was only supposed to be handed on to the son that he felt would grow to be the greatest man. The piece of property was a shield. He decided to get his sons together and told them that he would give the shield to the son that he thought showed the most kindness. 

The three sons went off to do their acts of kindness. 

When they came back, the first said, “Dad, I did something very kind. There was a small boy who fell into a creek. His mother was beside herself with terror and sorrow. I risked my own life. I jumped into the creek and saved the child.”

The father replied, “That’s not really kindness. That’s just being humane. Saving a small child is humanity. I’d expect it of anybody.”

The second son said, “Father, a lonely traveller came and he was going to go along the road, and he said, ‘Please take care of my money.’ He gave me 100 silver dollars. And he went away. I could have stolen all that money but I kept it safe for him and when he came back I gave him his 100 dollars. He wanted to give me 10 silver dollars, but I said, ‘No, this money’s yours. I only kept it for you. So I won’t accept a reward.' Isn’t that kindness?”

The old man said, “No, I’m afraid not. It simply shows that you don’t have a love for money. It’s a good quality, but it’s not kindness.”

The third son, said, “OK, let me tell you what I did. I was walking along the road, and all of a sudden I saw our great enemy, that we’ve had a feud with for such a long time. He was sleeping at the edge of a cliff. I could have gone and pushed him over. Or all I had to do was wake him up, and when he saw me, because our two families have been feuding for so long, he would have turned over and fallen off the cliff. But I woke him very gently and took him to a flat field where he could sleep without danger. I let him sleep there and went away.”

His father said, “Yes, my son. That’s real kindness. Because he’s not only your enemy. He’s the enemy of the whole family. But you have saved his life. So I’ll give you the shield.”

The moral is, “Don’t seek revenge on your enemies.”

This story is very apt for us this morning. In our epistle reading (Romans 12:9-21) we heard of the need for us as followers to let our love be genuine, to hold fast to what is good. We were also told that we were to treat those against us byloving them more and more. When people are attacking you reacting by loving them is unexpected. We follow God who did the unexpected who turned the world upside down by teaching us to love those who wouldn’t love us, to be good. 

The reading from Romans is a strange one in the way that it turns things the opposite way to how we would expect. If someone is your enemy and they are hungry – feed them, if they are thirsty give them a drink. If someone is evil towards you don’t be evil back but show them love. 

This is incredible. As we hear the news so we see people jostling for power. People prepared to get one up on another person. I don’t know about you but politics of recent times has seemed more and more about who is the best at different things. Who has the largest weapons. Who has the perseverance to keep going even when people seem against them. Who is so convinced that the way they are leading is right that they intend to trounce everyone else.

We can all shake our heads about what seems like irrational behaviour. Actually though we are all guilty of this type of behaviour at times but in a less publicised and less grand scale way. 

We are guilty of the behaviour when we don’t live up to the expectations that we heard about in the letter to the Romans. These expectations do seem rather tough but if you think about it they were written by Paul who admitted in other letters that he is not perfect. However, just like in other letters Paul showed his need for Jesus. With God he had everything, without God life was not as good.

We will all have times when we slip up in our faith, we will have times when we do things and say things that we know we shouldn’t really, but we are all called constantly to repent and start again.

In the gospel reading this morning (Matthew 16:1-28) we heard of Jesus telling the disciples that He would suffer and Peter not taking this well. Peter was determined to stop Jesus from suffering in any way. Jesus knew that His suffering was needed and He reacted to Peter in such a blunt way because Peter like us all needed to think beyond the normal feeiings that we have. 

We are not naturally always good at being perfect in terms of being like Jesus, but Jesus explained that following Him was hard. If you follow Jesus you need to be ready to take up your cross to deny everything and follow Him.

It’s not easy being a disciple but it’s always worth it. I often think of the fact that with God we have everything and without God we are not in the best place and so compared to following Him we have nothing. 

We are called to be different, we are to be followers of God, who put Him first who deny anything that gets in the way of our relationship with Him.

We need to be ready to not just turn the other cheek but to outdo the other person in showing love and forgiveness. Not to show off, but just because that is the way that God has made us to be, more and more like Him.

Being a disciple involves sacrifice. It involves all of us. Jesus did not want a large number of “little bit” disciples who had a “little bit” of prayer, a “little bit” of commitment, a “little bit” of dedication, a “little bit” of love. He wants all of us, basically, we need to put Jesus first, we need to seek to be ever more like Him, and by doing that to literally be, Jesus in the World today.

May we turn to God and seek to be more like Him day by day. AMEN