| Peace with Justice
Sunday May 18, 2008 |
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Betsy's Sermon
| We've been working on this Peace
with Justice Sunday for probably two months now, give or take a couple of
weeks. And when it was first brought up, I couldn't help but want to make a
sermon to deliver, so I almost immediately jumped at the opportunity. Although
I was unsure of my message, I still wanted to deliver a sermon, so I thought
about it for many weeks. At first I asked what I should do, and then after many
days, I began to wonder how our pastors can come up with one for every week in
the year, and talk for so long about it! And I just kept wondering how I was
going to come up with one sermon, months away from the time I volunteered to
make it. A few weeks ago I was told that I needed to hand in a rough draft of my sermon. Everyone that has gone through high school, and maybe some middle schoolers, will understand the feeling of absolute dread that came to me when I was told I needed to hand in a rough draft. Did it need to be double-spaced? Times New Roman? 12 Point font? One-inch margins? MLA format? Third Person? Formal? No contractions? Works Cited? Five paragraphs? And most importantly, when was the final due? This sermon wouldn't be my senior paper, but it still had to be written. I tried to think of my message that afternoon, and I thought about something I had discussed earlier on. Several weeks before, our Sunday school teachers, very intuitively if you ask me, decided that maybe the people that had volunteered to deliver a sermon for Peace with Justice Sunday didn't quite know what they should be talking about. I was very happy. At this point I was very lost, and I needed some help. I didn't even know where to begin with my message. So we talked about what we thought Peace with Justice actually meant. After an hour's lengthy discussion we came to a conclusion. I'm not quite sure about our decision, but I'm fairly certain that we decided that Justice came from Peace. This didn't help. I kept my un-inspired state to myself and reflected over Peace, and Justice, and anything that was even slightly relevant to the subject. I asked God for some help too, not sure how many times though. And the Lord did answer me. Thankfully. The idea came to me about Love. How without Love neither Peace nor Justice could exist. And it all seems quite like common sense. But I'm not talking about flighty Love, of the overly romanticized kind. I'm not talking about loving family out of sense of duty. I'm talking about loving neighbors. Loving the rest of the world. A strong bond of caring and concern for the well being of other people. Christians have been taught to love. We have. We're always told that from what seems to me to be the day we can even understand such concepts. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Treat others how you expect to be treated. Pray for your enemies. Christ died for the unrighteous and the righteous alike. We're called to live in Christ's image, live up to the expectations of God and Christ alike. So why is it that in the end, we fail so miserably at this? We're told to love. And we do. Certain people. People that we like. People that are close to us. But if everyone's our neighbor, why don't we love everyone? I wonder if people think that only certain people are our neighbors. If maybe only people with similar interests, appearances, or intelligences are our neighbors. If maybe only people that have the same needs, wants, personalities, or preferences are our neighbors. I've seen people totally and completely disregard other people because of a speech impediment, social problem, or maybe just different hobbies. Look at them as though they're stupid. Think of them as lesser. Make them out to be stupid, worse then trash. Most commonly this shows up in schools. It's bullying. But it happens with adults too. It's the eccentric person, the person that acts weird or odd. People don't love them, don't care for them. They aren't their neighbors. Only certain people are neighbors, so only certain people should be loved. The whole world isn't our neighbors. Terrorists aren't our neighbors. We don't have to love them. That's the common belief. But that's not the truth. Jesus the Christ once said to someone, who asked who their neighbors were, everyone was their neighbor. So, if we're supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves, why don't we love everyone? Was Jesus wrong in saying that? Can we just ignore the words of Jesus, maybe because the sun was making him think odd? I don't feel that way. Everyone should be loved. Not everyone that we choose. We shouldn't care about only certain people, but everyone. The entire world. God loves them. God loves everyone. Jesus did too. He died for everyone, even the people that wanted him dead. He loved them. They were his neighbors, after all. So what makes us so different? Why should we have to not care about others? What gives us the right to choose who our neighbors are? I think it's because of a subconscious complex that no one wants to get over. We fear what we don't understand. People fear what's unusual and different from what they know because they can't understand it. Many people just don't want to understand what they aren't used to. It's just the way we are. But that's just an excuse, which can only bring understanding, they don't, can't, make it right. In the wise in prophetic words of a movie writer, fear does turn to hate. When people fear something, they hate it. They hate it for being different. They hate it because they can't understand it. They hate it because it scares them, even subconsciously. People hate what scares them. They hate it for scaring them. They hate it. They can't understand it, so they fear it, and they hate it. They are afraid of people that are different from them, because they don't know them. They don't understand different people. Difference in people scares them, and they hate those people for it. They don't know them, so they are afraid and hate them. They don't understand what motivates them. They don't think that it would be worth their time to reach out to them. That person has nothing in common with them. So, that person doesn't need to be even remotely understood or cared for. World would be better off without them. They don't think that they can even begin to understand something, or someone, that's different from them. That's why most don't think of everyone as their neighbors. We don't understand why atheists don't believe in God the Father, so we fear and hate them. But, that's not what God, or Jesus, wants us to do. In the words of John, we need to cast out our fears. We cannot love if we fear, and we are called to love, so that we may abide by God. There is no fear in love. Love casts out fear. If we were to love everyone, we would not fear them. Because we would always be with God, and God would always be with us. And there would be no fear or hatred in the world. And everyone would be our neighbor. With love comes justice. If we love everyone the same, if we love that eccentric person that we don't share much in common with as much as our friends, as much as those we surround ourselves with, then there would be justice. Everyone would be treated equally while being different. People would not be moved to murder and commit crimes against others if they felt loved, even if they're different. If everyone was loved, then no one would be treated like something the cat dragged in and would not feel hatred and then hate the world. There would be justice. And from justice the world would have peace. There would be no hatred, there would be no war if there was less fear and more love. Everyone is different. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be loved. Just because they think differently then us, that doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to them. Ignore them. Disregard them. The eccentric person that confuses and scares us could be more approachable if someone said a kind word to them and asked them how they were. Just to know that someone, even if it's not their closest friend, cared for them. Wanted to know them, if even only a little bit. With that, perhaps they could know God and Jesus, and understand love, justice and peace. God and Jesus call us to love our neighbors as ourselves. They call us to love everyone. I wonder if we can come to their calling. |
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