The Toughest People to Love

Today we wrap up our summer series ‘all about love.’ We’ve spent a couple of months now looking at what love really means. The key idea is that love is promoting the spiritual growth of ourselves and those around us. We’ve gone through a number of specific actions and ways that we show love and last week we looked at one of the distinctions of the Methodist Church - this is the idea that we can have perfect love. It doesn’t mean we are perfect, but it means we strive to always share a kind of love that puts God and others first. We enter into their mindset, their pain, their struggle, to love the way that God loves them. Its a high calling, and I believe God invites not just one or two of us on that journey, but ALL of us. All of us can love others with God’s love all of the time.

Now I know that’s not easy to do, nor is it easy to figure exactly what that means. Some of us may be committed to loving others, even when they are evil or cruel to us, but what does that look like? What does that mean to love them? I think of my children. If I set a boundary for my kids and they trample across it, that can lead to huge problems. You don’t let a child play in the street where its dangerous. The same is true with adults - if they are causing havoc, if they are violating all kinds of social rules, they have to change THEIR behavior…even if we have to force them to…right? Or should we?

So our last look at love is about the toughest people to love. How do you handle those situations where someone won’t change. Maybe they are sick or have a disorder; their stuck heading in the wrong direction and you have to deal with them. Eric is going to read our scripture for today from the Gospel of Matthew. This passage is going to guide our reflections on the toughest people to love. This is Jesus, again, as last week, preaching in the sermon on the mount. He ends his most famous teaching with judging others and taking action, not just hearing it and doing nothing. We are going to focus on the part about judging others as we look at loving these challenging people. This is Matthew 7:1-12. Hear now the word of the Lord.

Matthew 7:1–12 NRSV

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. “Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you. “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

and from

James 1:27 NRSV

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

The word of the Lord for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray as we begin: Lord, may we be an inclusive community passionately following Jesus Christ. Many of us want to love others, Lord, but it can be so difficult. Help us to be faithful to your call even when things are challenging. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

When I was a boy in elementary school I remember a page out of my science book. It was a picture of an enormous sting ray. Actually, the giant ones are called Manta Rays and here’s a photo that gives you a sense of how enormous they are. Its absolutely breathtaking. But what caught my attention in the photo I saw was not how big and beautiful they were. It was actually that there were these little fish attached to this underwater behemoth. It struck me as very strange. Why would that huge creature just let those fish hang around it? Were they somehow friends? Maybe frenemies? Then when I read the section on ‘symbiotic relationships’ my little brain took in information that has forever changed my view of the world.

Those little fish are Remoras; they have these little suckers on them that allow them to attach themselves to larger sea creatures. Here’s a photo. They do this so they can hitch a ride around the ocean and eat the parasites that live on the sting rays or manta rays. The sting rays get cleaned of parasites and the remoras get to travel and eat! Sounds like a good life in retirement! These two creatures have what’s called a relationship of mutuality. They work together and both benefit. It’s the way things are supposed to go in relationships, right? But there are other kinds of symbiotic relationships under the ocean. Another is called commensalism, which is where one species benefits and the other doesn’t really care about the first one being there. A third form I already mentioned - that’s parasites. That’s when one species specifically harms the other to get what it wants.

I imagine for many of us we could probably name people in our lives that have taken on one of those roles. Some people live in mutuality with us, we benefit each other, we work for the good of the family or the workplace. Other people might be more like the second category; there’s no harm done, but maybe one person benefits a lot more than the other. Casual acquaintances might fit here. But its the third category that I think really gets most of us. Some people are like parasites. Its not a pleasant idea, but some people just take and take and take. How can you love someone that never gives back? How can the church love people that don’t operate out of mutuality? Maybe they don’t even believe in that or understand it.

Here are just a few examples of the kinds of people that are tough to love. This comes from Chuck DeGroat: people with disorders, such as narcissism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, borderline and histrionic personality disorders. There are also people that have addictions: sex and drugs, anorexia and self-mutilation. Now those can be serious situations, worthy of our attention and hardwork to improve on, but I’d like to focus on a third category he talks about of tough people to love.

The third category is the fool. There are lots of different kinds of fools out there, but an example of one is a grandmother, Judy, who refuses to follow the instructions of her daughter, regarding JUdy’s grandchild. Judy seems nice enough to most folks, but she blatantly disregards boundaries set by others. And when her granddaughter spent the night at Grandma’s house, she cooked fishsticks for her. That seems fine, except that the parents told her specifically that their daughter was diagnosed with Celiac disease. The parents ended up spending the night in the hospital with their daughter and when they confronted the grandmother, Judy said, “when you were young you ate everything. I don’t believe all this nonsense about allergies!” That, my friends, is a fool, who refuses to accept the truth. How do you love people that are so dismissive of reality, harming people with their ignorance?

It would be easy to berate these fools and put all the blame on them for all our problems, but I think the words of Jesus force us to slow down and reconsider. In Matthew 7 Jesus says, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” Now we might think of that as something like, ‘if I judge someone else, they are going to judge me, so don’t judge others.’ That very well may be true, but that’s not what Jesus is saying. The image here is of a scale. The more you judge someone the more you are putting weight on the scale. But its not judgment back from the people that you get. The judgment you receive, for judging others, comes from God.

This idea is all over the scriptures. Earlier in the sermon on the mount Jesus says your good works don’t bring glory to you, they bring glory to God. Proverbs 19:17 says “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and will be repaid in full.” Again, your good actions aren’t so much about you and that person; its between you and God. There’s a couple other ways we see judgment play out. One of the Old Testament laws says that if you give false testimony, if you lie in court about something you saw, and it was discovered, its not the person you accused that receives the punishment, you do! You are guilty of the crime simply for lying about it. The scriptures regularly condemn unjust judges especially if you take a bribe.

So the scriptures are pretty clear about judging. Its not to be trifled with. Judging is a sacred trust and must be done fairly. And your judgment isn’t really about the person, its actually about God. Jesus goes on to describe how ridiculous it is to judge someone else and remove the tiny speck in their eye when we, ourselves have logs in our own eyes. Jesus is saying, “Look, you’re a fool, too, you just can’t see it.” We are blind to our own shortcomings.

I can’t think of a better example than in this pandemic. We are all trying to figure out masks and vaccines and social distancing. My wife, Emily has shared with me how there is this growing anxiety for her that we, as a family, are being inconsistent in our response to COVID. Maybe you’ve felt some of this anxiety yourself. We say yes to some things and no to others, and at a certain point the rules we’ve made for ourselves don’t really make sense. The environment changes, the people change, new science comes out and then to top it all off the disease itself changes. Our family can’t keep up with the reality as it actually exists. Does that mean we stop trying to do the best we can? No, of course not! Does it mean we are rude and obnoxious to others who don’t do it the way we do it? Definitely not! ‘Don’t judge so that you may not be judged.’ I don’t want God condemning me because I thought I had it all figured out and it turns out I know just as little as the next guy.

As Jesus continues his sermon on the Mount he says don’t give what is holy to dogs. I know that puts our animal lovers on edge, but he’s talking about the stray dogs that will attack you unprovoked. Then he says don’t put pearls before swine and maybe we think it means something about not getting our nice things dirty, but there’s a surprising amount of debate on what this verse means. It could be tied with the verses just before it; that we need to be humble enough to receive correction and shouldn’t judge those who refuse to listen to us. Or, it could be tied to the next section about asking, searching and knocking. Then it would mean we should give only to those who want what we are offering, just like God does. So there’s some debate. Its not quite clear, but both make some sense. Either way, though, the final verse from today is very clear. Whatever we do, whether we are reserving judgment, humbly receiving correction from others, OR giving what others are willing to receive, we follow what we call ‘the golden rule.’ “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

This is a law of mutuality, of loving others the way you want to be loved; of treating others the way you would want to be treated. What I understand the scriptures to be telling us is just how important it is to avoid jumping to conclusions about others. Simply categorizing others as parasites means we are immediately on dangerous ground. We are very likely to misjudge someone else, either their intentions, or their reasoning, or even what their goals actually are. When we misjudge them we are breaking this law of mutuality, of doing for them what we would want others to do for us. I don’t want to be wrongly judged. I don’t want you to think I’m a bad guy when I’m trying my best to do good! And I bet that’s true for you, too.

There’s a ton of research about this little quirk about how we see ourselves. If you ask someone how good they are at something, they pretty consistently think of themselves as better than they actually are. My favorite is about driving a car; 73% of people think they are better than average at driving. That means a whole lot of people are not as good as they think they are, which leads, inevitably, to car accidents. I’m a great driver so this doesn’t apply to me. The same is true in our day-to-day interactions. When we think we are better than others, guess what happens? We think other people are worse than us. Our big heads lead to us trusting them less, too. Its called the fundamental attribution error. We attribute someone’s actions not to a response in the circumstance, but to a character flaw. We think, “something must be wrong with them to be doing that.” That’s all the opposite of what the golden rule teaches us - love them the way you want to be loved. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Don’t accuse them; accept them. Mutualism means we work for the good of each other; we want what’s best, so we will pause and talk and work it out.

In psychology the point is often made that you can’t control other people. What you can control is yourself. As Christians we recognize that in our sin and in our frailty as humans, we often can’t even control ourselves. That’s why the Apostle Paul says, “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” So how do we escape this loop of overestimating ourselves and thinking worse of others? We can see the goal is mutualism, doing for others what we would do for ourselves, but how do we get there? I know there are many ways we could move towards this goal, but one key, I think, has to be a change in our values.

This whole series we’ve been talking about loving actions toward others and we’ve even talked about James 1:27, that real religion is caring for orphans and widows in their distress. I’m a little embarrassed to say this, but it was only this week that the second part of that same verse really caught my attention. After “caring for widows and orphans” it goes on. Religion is also, “to keep oneself unstained by the world.” Unstained. The letter of James is all about a group of people who think they should make the world Christian by force, by violence. If they can just defeat the enemy with an army, then they can do things the right way. But James is correcting them. He says holding onto the world, valuing the things the world values pulls us in the wrong direction. Violence is demonic. So he lists for them what God’s values are: God’s values are for us to be peaceable, to be gentle, to be open to reason, to be full of mercy. Imagine a world where when someone does something we don’t like, instead of saying “I’m going to make that person change.” Instead we were unwavering in our Godly values, impartial in our judgment and without prejudice toward others. That’s a world that I want to be a part of. That’s a world full of love, even when we may disagree.

You judging others isn’t a problem just for you. I struggle with this, too. There’s one situation I’m thinking of where for years, literally years, I was sure I was in the right. I was even called in to meet with the Bishop over this issue. I was ready, essentially, to fight tooth and nail because I was right! I did nothing wrong, but the Bishop, he didn’t say ‘Brian you were wrong and I’m gonna tell you why you were wrong.’ Instead, he said, ‘Brian, I take responsibility for what happen.’ He said, “I (this is the Bishop speaking), I was wrong.” I will never forget that. It took me years to realize I was in fact the person who was wrong. Him taking on the blame for my mistake was what allowed me to finally see it was me. I was wrong. What a powerful example that is.

Let’s end here. A famous preacher was at a Conference, preaching each night to a crowd of people. After the first night a couple came up to him afterward for a brief moment and said what fans they were. He noticed the couple night after night, and the husband kept nodding off to sleep after just 5 or 10 minutes of his preaching. After a few nights of this he grew irritated. How obnoxious that he said he was such a fan and then he would just go to sleep right in the middle of the sermon every night. Obvious he wasn’t telling the truth. He was just there to support his wife; the preacher thought this husband probably wasn’t even actually a Christian.

Then on the last night the wife asked if she could speak to the famous preacher for just a minute. He said yes, thinking she would ask his advice on how to handle her two-faced husband. But as they spoke he was proven totally wrong. She said her husband had a serious form of cancer. He was on powerful medications that made him so sleepy. She said he was her husbands favorite preacher and he wanted more than anything to get a chance to see him and hear him in person. The preacher had never felt more embarrassed and chastened by the Lord than in that moment. God reminded him not to judge. That is God’s place to evaluate the hearts of the people. In Jesus, as he is put to death on a cross for no wrong that he has done, we hear him say, “forgive them father, for they know not what they are doing.” He tells a thief, “Today, you’ll be with me in paradise.” When the Apostle Peter asks, “Lord, how many times do I forgive someone who wrongs me?” He says, “seven times seventy.” Forgive and forgive and forgive. We don’t judge, we don’t hold a grudge, we don’t rub someone’s nose in their faults. We just love, because we want to be like Jesus. We want to be like Christ, all about love. Amen? Amen.