yeah, yeah, yeah

Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16

Love, hospitality, empathy… yeah, yeah, yeah.  It is a lot easier said than done.  We all know what we should do and how we should act but it is rarely that simple.

We hear stories in the news all the time about people in prison, we see images of torture sometimes at the hands of other countries but regrettably it happens at the hands of our fellow countrymen too.  We see images of children starving in foreign countries and initiated into gangs as purely a means of survival.  Yet, it doesn’t just happen somewhere else, it happens here too.

We see these images and hear stories but it is hard to have sympathy for people we don’t know in circumstances that are beyond our scope of understanding much less empathy.  It is simply hard to relate to people and situations we don’t know personally.  We can watch documentaries, read books, and go to conferences and trainings and these do open our eyes to the world around us but it just a starting place. 

Maybe God has called you to go, spend time living with and getting to know people from other places and life situations but you don’t have to travel around the world to meet people who need love and hospitality.  People all around us are struggling too.  Often in silence.

This week I participated in a training called “Darkness to Light” about child sexual abuse; how to recognize, prevent and protect children from it.  The statistics are staggering.  1:4 girls and 1:6 boys have been sexually abused.  So, chances are great that there are people in this room who have survived or still live in this emotional prison.  This is just one example.  There are many reasons people struggle.

Even though it is easier to relate when it is someone we know all of this is still in the abstract for many of us and maybe you are thinking I can’t handle helping anyone else.  I have too much on my plate already.  I have my own problems. 

I can’t possibly read another book, attend a training, much less travel the world or volunteer any more of my time and I have enough emotional baggage of my own to deal with.  I just can’t take on anyone else’s problems. 

For most people dropping everything even for a week or two is not what God has in mind.  For most, God is simply calling us to be aware, open and willing to see the people and situations around us through God’s eyes.  We are called first and foremost to know and understand that we are children of God.  It is recognizing the love of Christ in our own lives that then allows us to have compassion for others.  God is not asking us to take on and fix someone else’s life, but simply have compassion for the cashier who is having a bad day. Offer a word of encouragement and patience to the person you work with who cannot seem to get it together.  Offering a word of peace, love and forgiveness to the person who always seems to know how to push your buttons. 

That is what God is calling us to do.  It is not something that takes any more time and very little extra effort to stop, see ourselves as a child of God, see the person who gets on our last frayed nerve as a child of God, taking a deep breath and choosing to love them the way we want Christ to love us. 

One of the commentaries I read this week said that the opposite of love and hospitality is selfishness.

That is what God is asking from us; to be a little less worried about “I” and a little more worried about “We”.  Less about what is good for me and my family and more about the greater good.  We don’t have to go somewhere else to do this.  Yes, going other places,  being with other people and experiencing life outside our comfort zone makes it easier to reprioritize and refocus our lives but we are called to do this in our everyday lives; in the moments and situations that we find ourselves in every day. 

Two weeks ago in a suburb of Atlanta, Antoinette Tuff went to work as a school bookkeeper like she does every day but 8/21 was different.  A young man walked into her school with an automatic weapon.  He openly admitted to the woman in the office that he did not want to hurt the children but instead wanted to hurt police and commit suicide in the process.  The woman calls 911 but she also takes the time to talk with the young man.  She starts asking him questions about his life, telling him about her life.  She bonds with him, tells him she loves him, listens to him, shares her faith with him and encourages him to make the right decision.  The end of the 911 call you can hear the man show remorse for what he had done, and admit that he had stopped taking his medication and that he needed mental health treatment.  At one point as he threatened suicide, the woman at the school reminds him that he has so much more to live for, that he is making the right decisions now, encourages his positive choices and tells him again that she loves him and that she is praying for him.

Even though he shot a few rounds, this story had a happy ending.  No one was hurt, not even the gunman and this woman shared the deepest love of Christ to this man through hospitality, love and compassion. 

Who knows what any of us would have done in this situation.  Our first instinct is almost always personal survival.  We are naturally selfish.  We want to secure our own lives, safety, possessions, and emotions so we respond in fear.  This woman somehow knew though that her running in fear and desire for self-preservation would ultimately end with someone else losing their life so instead she showed love. 

I hope I would have the courage and faith to ask God to be in that place with me but hopefully I will never know what it means to experience that kind of fear.  The antidote for fear is love.  Loving and respecting the needs, relationships, emotional and life situations of others.  The message of hope we receive in our scripture lesson today is not just one of “do this- don’t do that” but reassurance that as we share love and hospitality with others we too will be blessed.  It is the reassurance that even on the darkest days when loving others is the hardest we still serve a God who refuses to leave us behind, will help us through the difficult moments in life and if we allow God to be a part of our lives, will grant us peace in times of fear.

We can look around this room, around the dinner table and know we are not in this alone.  We read the Bible, we look at pictures of our ancestors, we see the names of those who came before us tagging the pews, window, tables and font.  We can see proof in the lives of these people and their stories that God is faithful, God has not changed and really neither has this world.  God is still calling us to live a life of love, sacrificing our selfishness, pride, comfort and resources all the while praising God through our actions and our words. 

Is there someone in your life who needs love, compassion and forgiveness from you?  Take this time to pray that God will open your eyes to someone around you who needs to see the love of Christ through you.