Love as Sacrifice

"You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. No so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Jesus in Mark 10.42-45 (NIV)

We have said that loving people--even those we perceive to be enemies of the truth--requires relationship, service and sacrifice. Relationship--close proximity--is the basic need for love to happen. I was reminded again this morning as I read about Jesus at the home of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7.36ff). He was willing to go to a tax collector's house or a Pharisee's house. He wasn't concerned with what would happen to his reputation if he associated with a sinful person, whether that person's sin was moral (like the woman who anointed him in this story) or religious (like the Pharisee). Service flows from relationship; those we know we are more apt to take care of. We meet their needs. We do all the things of Matthew 25: feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, take care of the sick, visit the prisoner, etc. when we know the hungry, thirsty, naked...

But service cannot stop at the meeting of basic needs and still be called Christ-like. Jesus' last statement in the Mark passage is that he came to "give his life as a ransom for many." This raises a challenging question for me: what am I willing to give my life for? Who am I willing to give my life for? "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dar to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5.7-8)

Now obviously this whole line of blogs about "loving your enemy" applies to this reality: loving your neighbor. In other words, everyone who crosses my path or whose path I cross as I follow Jesus. How then does the community of Jesus-followers apply this to loving the gay community?

Relationship--we need to know them.

Service--we need to meet their needs.

Sacrifice--it is time that we gave up trying to manipulate the world into acting right outwardly so that we're not uncomfortable, and work at loving them for who they are. The love of God working through men and women will not leave any of us the same as we were. It profoundly changes us, inside and out.

It is time that we gave up on using worldly power the way that Jesus said the Gentiles do, lording even good things over people.

It is time that we sacrificed our own agenda for the sake of others, not in some milquetoast passivity that lets sin and evil rule the world, but that overcomes sin with love and evil with good.

Can the church in the US go there?

Love as Acts of Service

One of my good friends asked me recently, his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, why I was calling homosexuals "the enemy." I've tried really hard to figure out how to write this post without doing that. I don't believe that the gay community is my enemy, or the enemy of the church or of morality or whatever. As we discussed last time, it's not that simple. There are enemies of good in every community, inside and outside the organized church and the organized homosexual community. Evil is real. "Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you..." said God to Cain in Genesis 4.7 (NIV). Evil is in the world. And wherever it is, it can only be overcome with good.

We have been saying that love involves at least 3 things: relationship, service, and sacrifice. Today I want to write a little about service. Let's start back with the words of Jesus that originally launched this discussion:

"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you." Luke 6.27-31 (NIV)

Our culture demands getting even. But Jesus radically says that getting even cannot be the Way of the Jesus-follower. The Way involves serving even those who mistreat you. When someone hits you, physically or emotionally or whatever, don't hit back and get even. Offer another opportunity to display the radical love of Christ. [I'm not here talking about relationships of abuse--that's not what Jesus was talking about either. He's talking about those who are treated poorly because they do good.]

So, those who follow the Way of Jesus need to figure out how they can serve the homosexual community in the name of Christ. And it should be radical. It will be criticized by those who believe the stance of morality is to try and use every means possible to stamp out or marginalize sin. Evil can only be overcome with radical good, which means acts of service.

How do we do this? Well, it starts again with relationship. We need to be with gay and lesbian people and build relationships with them and love them. What kinds of acts of service should we do? First, we should do the things we do for anyone we have a relationship with. Invite them over for dinner, give them gifts on their birthday, include them to family activities. Don't shun, don't ostracize, don't ignore. If you get called names, respond with love and service, not anger and hatred.

Second, as a community of followers of the Way of Jesus, we need to serve the gay community when it is mistreated. If a person is beaten up or mistreated because they are gay, it should be Christ-followers who are first to point out this evil. We should be involved in promoting laws that protect all those among us, regardless of what we think about their lifestyles. We should carefully consider how we can promote the liberty of all, not excusing evil in any form.

Only good will overcome evil. Only service to others displays true love. Even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

May my life be a river of service to the world.

Loving Homosexuals

How do we love? What does it mean to love one's enemy?

This is part 2 of what I expect to be a long dialogue. My friend bwolf30 commented on my post about Roland Martin's CNN article: Martin "uses the failures of one part of the church as leverage to justify silence (or more accurately, compromise) on important issues. He doesn't explicitly say this but reading the article I get the feeling that just like with the EC guys, anyone with a Biblical opposition to homosexuality and/or abortion is scorned as a hypocrite or judgmental, or whatever. Well, its not that easy."

Absolutely, it's not that easy. Either way.

We've started with the premise that we are to love our enemies, and that love has at least 3 aspects: relationship, service and sacrifice. Today I want to talk about relationship.

Relationship is, I think, the greatest thing human beings can experience in life. Relationship with God, relationship with other people--there truly cannot be anything greater. We were made for relationship, made to live in community. Without relational interaction with other human beings, we do not live life.

When was the first relationship? Careful, it's a trick question. You might think it was Adam and Eve. Nope. Then you might think it was Adam and God. Nope again. Uh, God and the angels. Nah uh.. The first relationship was God. The mystery of the Trinity, the Three-in-One God, characterizes the value of relationships today. Relationship has eternally existed. Community is in our DNA, because it is in the "DNA" of God.

So to love is to have a relationship with. Love is not the absence of hate. It is not saying "I love them, but I don't like them." This is nonsense. To love someone is to seek out a relationship with them.

My first challenge then, for myself and for my community is this: it is time that we build relationships with those in the gay community, in particular those who claim to follow Jesus as well. It is time to stop throwing stones from a distance, lobbing holiness hand-grenades from behind the bunkers of the Christian ghetto, and move into the streets and stories of real people, loving them simply because they are. Not to evangelize them, although that might happen. Not to change them, although loving relationships change us all. But because they are, and we are. We all are, because of God.

The leaders of the Christian communities need to decide now that this debate will not be taken to the courts or the halls of government. We will not use the force of the state to enforce our morality in areas that don't involve the life and death safety of society. We will sit down with, break bread with, talk with and build relationships with people regardless of their "status" in life--even their moral status. Many will not understand, but they didn't understand Jesus eating with the "sinners" either.

On Dealing with Homosexuality

As an administrator at a small Baptist university, I have watched the recent news about Soulforce's 2007 Equality Ride and wondered what would happen if the bus stopped at our school. A group of gay, lesbian and transgender students are visiting 32 Christian schools to protest what they deem to be homophobic policies. Responses of the Christian schools have been varied, obviously. At many places, members of the group have been arrested, including at Baylor here in Texas where several spent the night in jail for illegal sidewalk-chalking. A friend at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama talked about their response, in which a group of Samford students met the bus in the parking lot, and each Samford student was assigned a Soulforce Rider to greet, give a tour of the campus, and eat with. After some discussion and disagreement, the whole group went to the chapel and offered a prayer together.

I want to start what will be a long discussion I'm sure by quoting Jesus in Luke 6.27-31:

But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

The modern evangelical church sees the homosexual community as its enemy (some of you are going to disagree with me on this, but I find most "love the sin, hate the sinner" arguments lacking in the love category, and our public statements sure sound like we think of immoral people as the enemy). So then, do Jesus' statements apply to the church at large? And if so, how?

It would seem to me that love--the kind of agape love Jesus is talking about--has at least 3 aspects: relationship, service, and sacrifice. How can the community of followers of the Way of Jesus practice those 3 things with the homosexual community regardless of whether you believe strongly that the Bible teaches homosexuality is sinful or whether you believe strongly that, just like our modern American view that slavery is wrong even though allowed in the Bible, homosexuality is viable in loving, lifelong, monogamous relationship?

This is a long and difficult question, and I invite comment on loving our enemies. There is a place to debate between the two viewpoints of my last question, but I don't want to go there until we really think about loving our "enemy".