IS LOVE A THING OF THE PAST?

A sermon by the Rev. Dr. James G. Kirk

Harundale Presbyterian Church

Glen Burnie, Maryland

May 16, 2004

Text: “As I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34)

First Reading: Acts 16:9-15

Second Reading: Rev. 21:10, 21:22-22:5

This past Wednesday on West Wing a delegation representing the White House was visiting the Gaza Strip. It was a state visit intending to better conditions between the United States and Palestine. After some preliminary meetings and some sight seeing the delegation was on the road when a land mine was triggered by remote control, overturning one of the cars and killing the Admiral and two congress people. Josh’s assistant, Donna, was seriously injured and flown to Landstuhl Army hospital in Germany where she is in critical condition.

When word reaches Washington of the attack, of course the first question is, what is the White House going to do in retaliation? Of course, we’re not going to know what will happen, since that’s the subject of next week’s show, which will culminate the season for this year.

In the meantime, the show exemplifies what is going on in the world today, what with attacks and counter attacks, fear of escalating terrorism that will undoubtedly reach our own shores, anxiety about whether security as we’ve known it for so many years is no longer a reality and just a general uneasiness that we’re heading towards a very prolonged time of war, declared or otherwise.

In the midst of these worldly events, both enacted on television and on the nightly news we read a text like we’ve read today, where Jesus makes it quite emphatic that if we love Jesus we ought to love one another and the way everyone will know that we are his disciples will be the way that we have love for one another. How in the name of God can we practice the kind of love John advocates and Jesus expects when a car can’t go down a highway without getting blown up and people killed? Which begs the question, is the love Jesus advocates a thing of the past?

During my senior year in college, I had to write a senior thesis for graduation and the topic of my paper was the application of love in William James’ philosophy to world events. While I got a passing grade, I was devastated when my professor told me that my thesis would never work. What he implied was tantamount to saying that on a universal scale or in the world of politics it was fanciful to assume that love could be defining principle of international relations. The world just didn’t or couldn’t work that way. So, in light of that judgment and in light of the West Wing episode and in light of the conditions in the world today, just what does Jesus mean when he says that we ought to love one another as he has loved us?

Now I must admit that I don’t presume to know or have the answer to how Jesus’ love could solve the situation we find the world in today. But there are some hints on what Jesus’ love is not when applied to the world situation. The first is that Jesus’ love never seeks to dominate a relationship. The other day I was talking with a woman who’d recently gotten married. Their courtship hadn’t been a long one, only six months, but she is 35 years old and was worried that if she didn’t marry soon, she’d never get married. So, she got married to this fellow who her girlfriend introduced her to and she’s been married a month now and already there are issues. She came to me the other day and confessed that her husband is a very controlling person, and what would I recommend.

The Washington Post carried an article recently by George F. Will titled, “No Flinching from the Facts.” In it he refers to the recent events in the Iraq prison and writes that, “Americans must not flinch from absorbing the photographs of what some Americans did in that prison. And they should not flinch from this fact: That pornography is, almost inevitably, part of what empire looks like. It does not always look like that, and does not only look like that. But empire is always about domination. Domination for self-defense, perhaps. Domination for the good of the dominated, arguable. But domination.”

And domination, almost by definition is going to take away the rights of another person. In marriage counseling, I always ask the question who’s the more dominant in the relationship. Oftentimes one will tend to be more dominant and the other more submissive. If that’s how it is then it’s good that the couple knows it and can agree to it. That’s very different, however, from one dominating the other. What the newly married woman was saying to me, and she used the term, “he suffocates me.” In other words, she was saying that he seeks to take the life out of her and replace that life with whatever he wants from her and that’s not love. What advice did I have for her?

There was a very poignant scene in West Wing when the President visits the admiral’s widow. He reassures her how they will find the perpetrators of the mine that killed her husband and they will be brought to justice. She looks at him in a very resigned way and says, “We live in a very different world today.” In other words, she knew how nations are so focused on domination today, whether for self-defense, whether for the good of the dominated, or simply just for the lust of power, and as long as domination is the order of the day retaliation will simply breed more violence and domination will continue to suffocate the life out of someone and replace that life with whatever others desire from them.

The second hint is that Jesus’ love never seeks to harm someone in God’s name. On West Wing it was reported that when reporters sought to converge on the crime scene Palestine youth threw rocks on them chanting the words, “Allah Akbar” or “God is great!” We heard those same words when the planes stuck the World Trade Center, when the USS Cole was bombed, when suicide bombers attacked the embassy in Lebanon, indeed when any acts of Muslim terrorism have occurred.

There is no amount of justification that can warrant any acts of terror using the words “God is Great!” That goes against the fundamental concepts of the Muslim religion. On West Wing a 26 year old woman was pictured with a machine gun around her shoulder explaining how soon she would be armed with explosives that upon detonation would assure her place in God’s heavenly garden. There was no mention of her leaving behind two children under five years of age, other than the fact that at her funeral the children would be given sweet candies in honor of her mother’s martyrdom. Jihad is a term that is used to justify death in God’s name, and whenever it’s used by fundamentalists of any religion there is no way on God’s earth that it can be construed in accordance with God’s will when in reality the Muslim religion is a very peaceful religion that teaches tolerance of both Judaism and Christianity. After all, all three have their origins in Abraham who is the father of us all. Love in the name of Abraham, of Jesus and of Mohammad abhors what is being perceived today as terrorism in God’s name.

The third hint we get from today’s events is love in the name of Jesus never succumbs to the herd mentality. In a recent issue of Time magazine it reports how in 1971 a “Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo created a fake prison ward on campus and randomly assigned student volunteers to be prisoners or guards. What was to be a two-week experiment had to be cut short after just six days because the guards ‘began to use the prisoners as playthings for their amusement.” The article goes on to write that, “Zimbardo and other psychologists who have studied torture and sadism by prison guards and soldiers believe that most abuse can be traced to group dynamics and circumstances rather than to individual personalities…Even people who think of themselves as very moral people, if other people are doing it, that makes it O.K.” (Time, May 17, 2004. Page 42).

“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus is not just talking to his followers two thousand years ago; he’s talking to you and me this morning. My professor in college may have been right; we can’t apply the concept of love to international politics. But that being the case there must be some way that we can apply what Jesus is telling us here and now so that we can make a faithful response to the world about us. We’ll have to wait until next week to see how West Wing resolves their dilemma. I’ll have to continue to work with the young lady who’s seeking to make her marriage work in the face of her husband’s suffocating behavior and his obsession with domination. We ourselves can’t do anything about the situation in Iraq except continue to pray for and support our troops who’re doing the best they can in light of the circumstances.

But whenever domination of another human being becomes the order of the day; whenever anyone claims to kill another human being in the name of God; whenever the herd mentality is used to justify human behavior just because everyone else is doing it, then like Specialist Joseph M. Darby, we have got to step forth and in the name of Christ exercise our God given obligation to do whatever the Spirit leads us do to witness to that love Jesus calls us to reveal. One way to do that is to hear again the words Paul wrote to the church at Rome. “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.” (Romans 12:9-21) That may just be as close as we can come to showing that we are disciples of Jesus in today’s world.

Thanks be to God,

Amen