You Shall Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ Then the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbor as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ After that no one dared to ask him any question. Mark 12:28-34

I have been heart-sick the last few days in light of the events in Charlottesville, VA over the weekend, with the rhetoric of overt racism, anti-Semitic and unbiased hatred that have been offered as legitimate ways of viewing and interacting with other humans.  The more news I view and read about what happened and the aftermath, the more upset I get.  I cannot reconcile how anyone who lives in this day and age can hold such arcane and destructive views. Nor can I accept that anyone who believes these things can claim that they are a follower of Jesus Christ. 

Point of fact – Jesus was Jewish.  He was not white.  He was not European. He was a rabbi – a Jewish teacher and he used Torah to instruct and share his message of God’s love.  The passage above is an obvious example of this, as Jesus cites the Hebrew Scriptures of Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18.  His message was about loving God and, ergo, loving each other as that is the only way to love God.  The verbal gymnastics that the white supremacists use to attempt to justify their interpretation that Jesus was not Jewish is beyond logic.

And yet I find myself convicted as well because I am called to love my neighbor as myself, even neighbors that make me ill and angry.  I can completely understand why those who felt called to protest this assembly lashed out in angry when confronted with the vitriol being shouted by the extremists.  While I want to believe I could be non-violent, I felt the desire to punch something rise with the bile in my throat while watching the news.  It made me think of the clips I saw of the 1960s civil rights non-violence training and how difficult that actually is – to not react to someone is trying to provoke you.  Because, supposedly, the one who throws the first punch is the one to “blame,” and it is an effective tactic that is used by those who want to provoke.

Yes, some of those who were protesting the white supremacist did lash out physically, but, as our Bishop, Chip Stokes has written, there is no moral equivalency about these actions by the extremists and the protesters. Insisting that hatred has any positive qualities is heinous.

However, and this is the bitter pill to swallow, as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus, I am called to love my enemy who is my neighbor.  I will never agree with what they say or what they believe, but I cannot deny them the dignity of their humanity, even when they deny it of others.  This is the most difficult aspect of my faith to justify, because I want to enjoy my hatred of all these people stand for.  I want to consider them “the other,” but then I am just as guilty as they are when they refer to their “enemies” as animals.  You don’t have to treat a fellow human with love as Christ taught if you don’t see them as human. 

There are no easy answers to our societal problems.  I can easily let all of this overwhelm me to the point of inaction, but instead I pray.  I pray without ceasing that we will all follow Jesus’s teaching of love and that love will overcome hate.  I pray for those I consider my enemies and I pray that my heart will not be hardened against them.  I pray that God’s will be done and not mine, and I pray that I understand more clearly what God’s will is rather than pushing my own agenda. 

I hope you will join me in prayer as well.  Because the only way we can move forward is together.

In Christ’s Love,

Rev. Valerie+

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