Developing Your Character:
Learning to Love
by Pastor Greg Fitch
August 17, 2008
SCRIPTURE: Matthew 22:34-40 and Galatians 5:13, 14, 22-23

\ A little girl one day went to her mother to show some fruit that had been given to her. "Your friend," said the mother, "has been very kind."

"Yes," said the child. "She gave me more than these; but I have given some away."

The mother asked to whom she had given them.

She answered, "I gave them to a girl who pushes me off the path, and makes faces at me."

When asked why se gave them to her, she replied, "Because I thought it would make her know that I wish to be kind to her, and maybe she won't be so rude and unkind to me again."

Somewhere this child heard and remembered Jesus' words in the Bible recorded in Matthew 5:44 à "… love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven." This is definitely a difficult thing to do, in fact it's hard to love some of the people who it should be easier to love … at least it seems to be the case.

LOVE CHILDREN IN ABSTRACT … NOT CONCRETE

A story in the Sunshine Magazine illustrates how difficult it is to love others. A professor of psychology had no children of his own, but whenever he saw a neighbor scolding a child for some wrongdoing, he would say, "You should love your boy, not punish him."

One hot, summer afternoon, the professor was doing some repair work on a concrete driveway leading to his garage. Tired out after several hours of work, he laid down the towel, wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and started toward the house. Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a mischievous little boy putting his foot into the fresh cement. He rushed over, grabbed him, and was about to spank him severely when a neighbor leaned from a window and said, "Watch it, professor! Don't you remember? You must 'love' the child!"

At this, he yelled back furiously, "I do love him in the abstract, but not in the concrete!"

That illustrates it, doesn't it? This illustrates perfectly the dilemma we are in when it comes to … not just talking about love … but living it out … making it real … turning it into something concrete instead of letting it remain abstract and ethereal.

JESUS TELLS THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT

In Matthew's gospel the leaders of the faith community have been testing Jesus, not just for knowledge, but asking questions in hopes He would mess up and they could publicly discredit Him.

((read Matthew 22:34-40 here))

An expert in the Law of Moses steps up and tests Him with this question, "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"

This question almost seems silly it is so understood by the Jewish people. I can almost hear the disciples going, "Oh, come on, a child could answer that!" There is only one answer, and that is to love God … to love "God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." (see Deuteronomy 6) And, "love your neighbor as yourself." (see Leviticus 19:18) And the kind of love Jesus speaks of here and throughout the gospels is agape love ("love" in Galatians 5 is agape) … unconditional, a decision to chose to live a certain way, hold someone up with esteem, not some fleeting feeling that changes with our mood.

Content and theory were supposed to be impressed not just on brain cells, but on their hearts as it had been done thousands of years prior with their ancestors Abraham and Sarah. Thus, when it came time to apply that faith and love - to make it concrete - the closest things were the actual stones making up the temple and the temple walls. No wonder Jesus made the statement that if the people continued to keep silent - to fail to make faith real - even the stones would cry out God's praise.

Have we become a people for whom the most concrete things in our lives are the sidewalks and roads around us? Is there a potential that they might make a better witness than the concrete parts of our lives under the Holy Spirit?

In the last community we lived in down in Allen, Texas, I watched over several months as road construction crews were building a bridge over another roadway. One day as I drove by, I noticed that the giant concrete posts rising up from the ground to hold up the bridge were being smashed to pieces and being reduced to rubble. They had been there for many weeks, were already hardened and looked fine to my eye … as far as I could see, they looked just like any other concrete post under so many bridges. But I discovered that the workers somehow messed up, and what looked good on the outside, fell far short of being right on the inside.

We need to build our lives with the right stuff - God's stuff - on the inside so that what people see on the outside will suggest what is truly on the inside of us.

JESUS GIVES A NEW COMMANDMENT

Jesus knew we would have a difficult time, but He helped us know that it was very important the kind of witness - through love - that we are. He gave a command, not a request, to His disciples in John 13:34-35 when He said:

"A new command I give to you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love (agape - unconditionally) one another."

The outside might look right, but let's love like Jesus did so people will know that there is some spiritual rebar inside. But living, every day, and pouring out God's grace and mercy and forgiveness and love toward others lets people know that we are truly Jesus' disciples. Make sure to put Jesus love into concrete actions! The world does not need more abstract Christianity.

WHAT DOES THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT LOOK LIKE?

So, how do we make love real in our lives? How do we turn the abstract talk of love into something concrete? C. Thomas Hilton offers some thoughts for us to ponder:

Ingenuine love is easy to discern, for it is limited. It is guarded. It is a love that is conditional. I will love you, if you will love me in return. If you will do this for me, I will do that for you. It often involved bargaining. The one characteristic that is most obvious in ingenuine love in the church is that it is selfish. Any expression of affection that is only self-serving is … "eros" love, and expression of love for oneself. No matter what you called it, no matter how you dressed it up, no matter what others think it is, if it is motivated by a desire to serve one's own needs, it is ingenuine love.

Genuine love, agape, is expressed in the willingness of a person to lay down one's life for another. There is no greater love: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13). This is the love that Christ models for us.

Remember, emotional love - while is it part of God's gift to us - is not the love Jesus tells us to live … Jesus wants us to express unconditional love toward others … choosing and committing our life to wish and do good toward others.

REMEMBER GIRL GIVING FRUIT TO HER "ENEMY"

Recall, first, the story of the little girl I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon giving away some of her fruit to her enemy. She was making the presence of God's spirit evident by the fruit of not only her basket, but of her life. She was making love concrete.

MAN SLEEPING UNDER CARDBOARD BLANKET

Hear one man's story of love for his "neighbor":

In the winter f 1990, I was asked to appear on a television talk show in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. At the end of our first day of taping I was on my way back to my plush, high-rise, cable TV, twenty-four-hour room service hotel, when I saw something I'd never seen before. Lying on the sidewalk against a building in four inches of snow was a man sleeping with only a cardboard blanket to keep him from being completely exposed to the freezing cold.

What really broke my heart was when I realized that he word no shoes or socks.

I thought to stop and help him but was not quite sure what to do. As the traffic light turned green, it seemed life was demanding that I move along. So I did.

Back in the "anything I wanted was mine" environment of my hotel, I promptly forgot about the man on the street.

Several days later, prior to the morning taping, I was having coffee and Danish in the green room at the station. All of the "important" people had left the room and it was just me and the janitor remaining. I had seen him quietly go about his business every day while I was there, and he never said a word except "Good morning" or "Can I get anything for you, sir?" He always had a smile to give to everyone. When I asked him how he was feeling today, he told me that he'd been feeling rather sorry for himself … that is, until he say a man sleeping down on the corner or Younge Street and Bloor with just a piece of cardboard for covering from the cold, and no shoes. I almost choked on my Danish as I heard him go on to relate how he was so moved with compassion for the man that he pedaled around the corner to a store and bought the main a pair of socks and shoes.

As I heard his story, I saw in my mind a poster that used to be in an old friends bedroom with I was a teenager. It was a picture of a child handing someone a flower and the caption read: "The smallest deed always exceeds the grandest of intentions."

I stood there wishing it was me who had bought the shoes and socks for the man, when they called my name to come to the set.

As I got to the studio, they were just concluding and interview with a social worker who specialized in benevolence for eastern Ontario. The social worker relayed a story about Mother Teresa, who when asked once how she had accomplished such great things in her life responded, "None of us can do anything great on our own, but we can all do small things with great love."

When I went home that day, I looked for the man on the street. He was gone, but I knew it wouldn't be long before someone took his place.

1 CORINTHIANS 13

That, of course, is just one way for love to be concrete. You and I will have to discover ways in our own lives to make the love of God real and visible and life-changing.

1 Corinthians 13 is known as the Love Chapter. While used in many weddings, it was not intended for sole use in marriage. It speaks of how every person is to live when we have Christ Jesus in our lives. It helps us to develop and nurture the quality of love in our actions. Hear what Paul told the church almost 200 years ago:

Love is patient … is kind … not envious or boastful or proud/arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way … is not easily angered … keeps no record of wrong … rejoices with he truth … always protects … always trusts … always hopes … always perseveres.

And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is … love.

INVITATION - DOES A PLASTIC HEART HAVE LOVE IN IT?

"Does a plastic heart have love in it?" This question was sent by sever-year-old Linda Griggs of Pittsburgh to the famed heart surgeon, Dr. Michael DeBakey of Houston, Texas. Dr. DeBakey replied:

"Yes, a plastic heart has love in it, a great deal of love.

"The love in a plastic heart comes from many people who love other people, and don't want them to die.

"So, these people work all day and often all night to build a heart that will make people live longer.

"If you think of how much love there would be in hundreds of hearts, then that is how much love there is in a plastic heart."

But God's love for us is still greater … greater than the love of every heart on earth put together. A love so great that Jesus came and died to show us just how much He loves us. ((continue with invitation))