We Don't Love Enough
Posted on Jun 08, 2014 by
Shared by BJ Fevold
I did a Google search for weird laws in Kansas - Did you know that in some places in Kansas it is illegal for restaurants to sell cherry pie a la mode on Sundays; that if two trains meet on the same track, neither one of them can proceed until one of them has passed (think about that one); that rabbits cannot be shot from motorboats (think about that one, too); that when crossing the highways at night, pedestrians must wear tail lights; that you’re not allowed to drive a buffalo through a street; that in Lang, KS, it is illegal to ride a mule down Main Street in August unless the animal is wearing a straw hat; that in Natoma, KS, it is illegal to throw a knife at anyone wearing a striped shirt (I assume striped shirt stores do very well there); that in Topeka, it is unlawful to transport dead poultry along Kansas Avenue; and in Wichita, it is illegal to carry a concealed bean snapper.
Now let’s not leave Missouri out of this: in Missouri, there are laws where a man must have a permit to shave; and drunkenness is an “in--alienable right.” Also, there’s a law that was enacted in 1820, where single men between the ages of 21 to 50 must pay a special annual tax of $1.00. In Kansas City, while children may purchase shotguns, they are not allowed to buy toy cap guns. In Saco, women are forbidden from wearing hats that “might frighten timid persons, children or animals.” In St. Louis, it is still illegal for firemen to rescue women who are still in their nightdresses. And in University City, it is illegal to honk the horn of someone else’s car.
What got me to look these up was when, several months ago, I got to thinking about “laws”or sins that many people are bringing up from the Bible, almost exclusively against homosexuality, and how they – WE – seem to think we can cherry-pick which ones we think should still apply and which ones we can ignore.
Here is a list of just some of the other “laws” or “sins” mentioned in the Bible that many would say are out of date just like those Kansas and Missouri laws I just mentioned. Many of you probably already have heard of them.. but ask yourself…, do we hold everyone accountable for ALL of them?
From Leviticus:
Don't let cattle graze with other kinds of Cattle. Don't have a variety of crops on the same field. Don't wear clothes made of more than one fabric. Don't cut your hair nor shave. Don’t wear torn clothing. Any person who curses his mother or father, must be killed. If a man cheats on his wife, or vise versa, both the man and the woman must die. There are ones about a man and his father's wife, or a man and his wife’s mother, or a man or woman and animals, or a man and a woman during her menstrual cycle.
Then there’s some where any psychics, wizards, and so on are to be stoned to death.
If a priest's daughter is a prostitute, she is to be burnt at the stake.
There’s something about people who have flat noses, or are blind or lame, who are not allowed to go to an altar of God.
Anyone who curses or blasphemes God, should be stoned to death by the community.
Oh – and tattoos are forbidden.
There are all kinds of food restrictions too, like not eating shellfish, or animals with hooves or that chew cud, or creeping animals, as well as not eating a multitude of birds. If you do, it’s a sin.
Then in Deuteronomy: Anyone who dreams or prophesizes anything that is against God, or anyone who tries to turn you from God, is to be put to death. If anyone, even your own family suggests worshipping another God, kill them. If you find out a city worships a different god, destroy the city and kill all of its inhabitants... even the animals. And we are to kill anyone with a different religion – don’t many of US say disparaging words about other religions that espouse that belief… yet our Bible says this, too?
Then there is divorce which is mentioned several times in the Old and New Testament, as God does not look favorably on divorce, and there are very few exceptions where divorce is allowed in Scripture.
Then we were given the Ten Commandments which are at least a little more, what most of us would say, reasonable and clear, but how well do we hold true to these, too:
You are to have no other gods before God.
You are not to make any idols.
Don't use the Lord's name in vain.
Keep the Sabbath day holy
Honor your mother and father
Do not kill
Do not commit adultery.
Don't steal
Don't bear false witness.
Don't covet your neighbor's house or property.
That’s a lot of Dos and Don’ts. But several years ago Terri and I took a Bible class here at Salem that really opened my eyes. One of the main topics was about a (not so) new commandment that basically overwrites all of these other laws. The leader of the class was so adamant about this that he expressed his displeasure with the band playing a song about the 10 Commandments and the kids singing another song also about the 10 Commandments because he felt we shouldn’t be talking about them but instead about this new commandment.
Reading from John 13, verse 34: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just like I have loved you; that you also love one another.”
If you look at this commandment and then the Ten Commandments, you quickly see that if you follow this new commandment, you will automatically follow the Ten Commandments. If you TRULLY love one another, you wouldn’t break any of the 10 commandments…automatically.
When we continue to go back to those old laws and cherry-pick which ones we’re going to use as a club against others, we are totally ignoring this new commandment to love EVERYONE. Notice it didn’t say we are to only love those that are like us in every way…. but to love EVERYONE.
Didn’t Jesus show love for everyone…. which included lepers, prostitutes, liars, cheaters, thieves, the outcast and even those who would persecute him. He loved EVERYONE. Why do we make it seem so hard to do the same?
Given all those old laws (or sins) and this new commandment, if you were to ask me what I believe is the #1 sin against God, I would have to say it is that we don’t love enough!
I find it very interesting that when you ask people about their favorite Bible verses, there aren’t any of these old “law” verses but almost always verses having to do with Love. Yet when you ask people from the younger generations, many will say they believe we Christians, whose favorite verses deal with love, aren’t as loving as we espouse to be and, therefore, they are staying away from us religious communities that don’t practice what we preach.
I also found it interesting… when I stopped and thought about this subject…. that I realized that my kids have taught me a lot about how to love and/or who to love….
In the last weeks of our 23-month-old son, Joey’s, life, he would always want physical contact and we’d always, at a minimum, have to hold his hand; even when I would lay on the hospital floor next to his hospital bed at night to sleep, I would have to hold his hand through the bed railing. I truly felt this was also him knowing that he was dying and wanting to have as much physical signs of love before he died. We always would tell him we loved him and he would say he loved us (in his own language), but he still insisted on this physical contact.
You see, Joey taught me that words aren’t enough, words with the physical interaction are just as important, if not more important. This made me think of Salem and the Pantry Pack Program and Children’s Memorial Food Kitchen. A majority of us SAY we support these endeavors and many of us support it financially or by donating food which is great AND absolutely necessary and they are physical things; but they are anonymous – you don’t see them and they don’t see us. Unfortunately, when it comes to the physical act of love for the people we serve in these two programs, that physical interaction, there is only a small minority of members who volunteer their time to support these programs by physically handing out the food and seeing and meeting the people we serve. These programs always struggle to fill the time slots for serving. If I had my way, I would make it a documented expectation of membership at Salem that every member served at least once a year in one or both of these programs – but, really….if I had my wish, it wouldn’t be necessary…..
Then there’s Emily who will constantly remind me, by her actions, to be like Jesus and not forget about the children and to serve others, especially those we don’t even know. Most everyone knows that she LOVES the kids of this church. She knows their names; she interacts with them at their level, and makes them feel special – knowing a high school girl talks to them and doesn’t treat them as though they were invisible or a pest is a pretty good feeling to these kids. We adults should follow her lead. Don’t just say Hi to them, try to be a part of their life.
She was also part of the KCLYC youth leadership team that heard about the limited service projects offered at the National Lutheran Youth Convention and they felt it didn’t include enough service, so this group of youth, on their own, decided to skip the experience of going to the convention with 10,000 other Lutheran youth by going to Harlem to help an inner-city church to be re-born! These youth are a shining example of the joy of serving others and showing strangers that they are loved and not forgotten! An interesting side-note, this year, they have over 40 adults who want to go on the KCLYC mission trip because they want to be a part of the same amazing experience of serving others that these youth are experiencing every year for the last several years!
And then there’s Cole. Cole is teaching me that Salem and the Christian church, as a whole, still has a long way to go. Many of you may not know it yet, but Cole is gay. We’ve known this since he was in middle-school but it’s just not something you flat-out say in a conversation unless it comes up…. which it rarely does.
After he moved to Boston, he would tell us how he was struggling to make friends. So we suggested to him to join a social or civic group and to also find a church home. I would tell him, “if there’s one place that you can feel loved, it’s at church, just like at Salem where everyone loves you”. It wasn’t until after several similar conversations that he finally admitted to me that he actually did NOT feel loved at Salem. …..My heart was crushed… because Salem is definitely one of the places that I feel 100% loved so I assumed everyone else did too. What I deduced though is that Cole was lumping Salem in with the Christian church as a whole where LGBT people are being persecuted and told they can’t love the same way straight people can love. It was then that I realized that we STRAIGHT Christians don’t have a corner on the market when it comes to love! And I thought about my love for my wife, Terri, and how I want EVERYONE to be able to experience the same love with someone else that I have with Terri. Cole helped me realize this, but he also helped me realize how much further we, as Christians, need to go to both express in words and in actions that we are to love EVERYONE, no matter who they are, just as the New Commandment tells us in John 13: 34.
And if we do this, if we love EVERYONE, as the very next verse says, and I’m paraphrasing from John 13, verse 35: "By showing love for everyone, the rest of society will know that we are His disciples." How fitting that just last week at the late service, we even sang about that when we sang the song “They Will Know We are Christians By Our Love”. Right now, many in the younger generations (heck, many in the older generations) feel the title should be more like “They will know we are Christians by our love for only those that are like us yet persecute or ignore those that aren’t” – long title, I know….
My wish is that you’ll think more about this 2000+ year-old New Commandment and my #1 sin of not loving enough and reflect on how you personally, how Salem and how we Christians, as a whole, follow this “New Commandment” to love EVERYONE.
I want to leave you with one more short story:
This was seriously a random text I received just out of the blue one day from Cole last November that struck me so much that I kept it until I started writing this sermon. This is what it said:
“I was lying in bed last night and I think I know where my time anxiety comes from: I’m afraid when I die that I didn’t love everyone nearly as much as I should have.
So my goal for December is to love one person more completely each day and to show that love.
It’s never enough. But I think it’s a really easy goal. I just have to love anyone better (not perfectly), be it a stranger or friend.”
Wow! What a goal! One we should all have as our own personal goal! Did you catch how he said it’s a really easy goal?!? He’s right – it SHOULD be easy….
Amen to that…..