When I was a senior in high school, one of my classmates
decorated and taped a sign up onto her locker. It had Rom 1:16 written on it
and stated in big fancy letters: “I’m not ashamed of the Gospel!” It was up
there just a few hours before someone walked by and ripped it off. She didn’t
know who did it, or why, but during the next period, she make herself a new
sign, near identical to the first, and taped it on her locker as she moved to
her next class.
That was on a Monday. Tuesday morning, upon arriving at her
locker to get her things for first period, she was aghast to see that her sign
was once again removed. So she started the process again: make a sign, post a
sign, lose a sign. This continued throughout the day and the next.
Make a sign, post a sign, lose a sign. Make a sign, post a
sign, lose a sign.
By Wednesday afternoon, she was pretty upset about it. That
night, at FCA, she shared her discouragement with us. She was simply trying to
share her beliefs, and someone was tearing her down every time. So we decided
as an FCA group that we were going to join her in declaring our faith for
everyone at Burnet High School to see. A group of about thirty of us made our
own signs that stated in big bold letters: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel!”
It sparked a movement. Soon more and more people were
putting up their own locker signs in support of the faith. It did not take long
before every third locker or so was wearing its own Romans 1:16 sign. They were
multicolored and sported handwriting spanning from completely illegible to
seemingly professional calligraphy, and they all declared what we thought was a
strong stance on hard issue.
We were standing up for our faith, and supporting a fellow
Christian’s right to stand up for her faith as well.
The signs kept coming down, though. No matter how many
people put them on their lockers, every passing period saw more and more ripped
off and thrown on the ground. We would work in groups to make extra signs,
intent on winning this extremely important cultural battle. And the cycle
escalated. Make 20 signs, post 20 signs, lose around 12 signs. Make 20 more
signs, replace the 12 signs and post 8 more signs, lose a few more signs.
And so on and so on.
We were winning, though! More signs were popping up than were
being torn down. And it didn’t take long before a group of us spotted one of
the perpetrators vandalizing our pious property. We jumped on him, yelling at
him and calling him names and humiliating him in front of the student body for
his heinous crimes. Soon we even figured out whom the other people were who
were ripping down our signs. We didn’t seek most of them out to verbally
destroy them, we just made sure that everyone else knew who they were so that
we could collectively shun them and teach them a lesson about attacking us in
such a way.
And we won. After a while, no one ripped our signs down any
longer.
The guy whom we so well shunned was the son of two members
of my church at the time. He didn’t attend except when forced to do so, but his
parents were strong members and avid supporters of the youth ministry. They
came up to me after the service one Sunday and asked me if I knew what had
happened with their son at school. They said that he came home so upset one day
that he had refused to go back, that he said everyone hated him and it wasn’t
worth it.
I pleaded ignorance, but I knew what had happened.
It was at that moment that I was realized that I was
ashamed, deeply, deeply ashamed. Not of the Gospel, but at myself and at my
fellow classmates that we would do such a thing in the name of our God. We were
trying to stand up for our faith in the one whom we believed was the epitome of
love, and in doing so we had shown hate and alienation for those who truly
needed to know that love.
The next day I tore my own sign down, for I realized that
what it stood for was not love, and therefore was not God.
The night that Jesus was betrayed and arrested, he shared a
special meal with his disciples, one that we today call the Last Supper. After
he broke the bread and shared the cup with his friends, he poured out his heart
to them through teaching and prayer. One of the things he said to them set the
standard for Christianity for the rest of history:
He said, “A new commandment I give you: love one another. As
I have loved you, now you must love one another. By this, the world will know
that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
In this simple command, Jesus declared for perpetuity the
means by which his followers would be known: love. Just as the soldier is known
by his uniform and the king is known by his crown, the Christian is to be known
by the love that she shows others. This is the disciple’s badge of honor, the
flag proudly blowing in the wind.
Love.
Sadly, our brothers and sisters in Christ have not always
been very good at showing this love throughout history. In the name of Christ,
we have sparked wars, tortured and murdered, cheated and stolen, shamed and
alienated. In the name of Christ, we have rejected those who think differently
than us, belittled the beliefs and opinions of others, and built walls of anger
and piety to separate us from them.
In the name of Christ, we somewhere along the way replaced
love with hate.
But the words
of Jesus call us back, again and again, to the true banner of our faith. A new commandment I give you: love one
another. As I have loved you, now you must love one another. By this, the world
will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another.
This is not always an easy commandment to follow. Peter
learned this when Jesus rebuked him for fighting against the very people who
were there to arrest his master. Paul learned this when Christ called him out
for persecuting others in the name of the Lord. Stephen, the first martyr, learned
this lesson as he prayed for the very people who were stoning him to death.
Love is hard, because it means setting aside our own pride,
our own ideas on morality, and our own prejudices for the sake of the other. It
means recognizing that being right is not as important as sharing love. It
means opening our arms to those whom we would want to so quickly push away.
This last week, the nation went into an uproar because
Chick-fil-a’s president shared his views against gay marriage in a public
interview. It soon also became common knowledge that the company had donated a
large amount of funds to anti-homosexual institutions, including some that have
been declared as hate groups by national organizations. Many Christians around
the nation began boycotting the fast food chain, refusing to eat any longer at
a place that they felt funded injustice. Other Christians, enraged by the
boycotts, began speaking out in favor of the company for what they saw as its
deep biblical values and its president’s right to free speech.
Like the locker sign movement at my high school so many
years ago, this escalated quickly and nastily. Last Wednesday was declared
“Chick-fil-a Appreciation Day”, and thousands of Christians from all over the
nation went to their local restaurant to show their support of what they saw as
biblical and foundational beliefs. Others stood outside, standing up against
what they saw as injustice by picketing these establishments. Social media
exploded with people on each side of the issue throwing theological and
ideological punches at each other, each striving unsuccessfully to sway the
other.
Both were standing up for what they thought was right, and
both managed to do as much, if not more, damage as good. The internet was
teeming with posts, interviews, and statements from people who felt hurt and
alienated by the church that day. Some were outspoken gay members of the church
who could not believe what their fellow brothers and sisters were doing. Some
were from Chick-fil-a employees—people who needed their jobs to support their
families—who had to serve people who would condemn them to hell because of
their orientation.
Others saw the hate and heard the condemnation from both
sides of the schism and decided that if that is what the church was about, they
would have none of it.
Brothers and sisters, we forgot this week, as we do so
often, our call to love. This, above all else, is what is supposed to set us
apart from the world, supposed to declared to everyone the God we serve. We are
not, however, called to win every argument. I have my views on what I think is
right, you have your views on what you think is right, and so does everyone
else in the world. Those who follow Christ have the Bible to guide our
thoughts, words, and deeds, and yet even with this text we cannot always agree
on what is right and wrong. But the truth is that as followers of Christ,
before we are called to take up the issues, before we are called to speak the
truth in Christian love to each other and before we are called to keep each
other accountable—before all of else—we are called to love one another as
Christ loves all.
When we engage in hate, we should be ashamed—not of the
Gospel, but of ourselves. When we alienate, reject, and exclude, we lift up a
different banner than that of our God. When we forget to love, we toss aside
the very thing that makes us different from the world.
Because the truth is that Jesus Christ loved and accepted
everyone. He ate with sinners, consorted with tax collectors and prostitutes.
And before he ever tried to correct anything or anyone, he always included them.
Let us all strive to do likewise.
A new commandment I give you: love one another. As I have
loved you, now you must love one another. By this, the world will know that you
are my disciples.
Amen.
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