Love One Another!!

John 13:34-35

A three year old girl was still whining and crying long after going to bed.
Deciding that she would not give up and go to sleep, her father went in to ask what was wrong.
" I am scared of the dark," she sobbed.
" But you know there is nothing that will hurt you here in your room.
And besides, God is right here with you to protect you," her father replied.
" But God doesn't have any skin on!" She answered.

Jesus Christ was God with skin on.
Jesus said: " A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another
even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
By this all men will know that you are my disciples, If you have love for one another."
(John 13: 34-35)

An ancient clay tablet inscribed about 4000 BC tells of a mystic who believed
that the secret of life could be discovered by going without food.
Just as he was learning to live without food, he died.

Those who attempt to live without love will meet the same fate.
When we reach out in love to other people, our self esteem increases.
When we concentrate on loving ourselves, our self esteem starves.

Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud eventually limited his treatment goals to only two goals:
One was bringing patients to the point where they could work for a living,
and secondly, where they could learn to love.

Theodore Reik wrote that without the capacity to love there is neurosis.

In the fourth century BC, Plato said in his Symposium,
" He whom love touches not walks in darkness."

The love section in most quotation books contains the largest number of pages because
love is one of our greatest needs and one of life's most obvious truths.
At the deepest level of our being, we know that we get what we give.
We should learn how to give more.

A Physician said to his patient, a lady: " I have been practicing medicine for over 30 years.
I have prescribed many things.
But in the long run, I have learned that for most of what ails the common creature,
the best medicine is love."

The lady to whom he had said this, asked: " What if that doesn't work?"

The doctor answered, " Double the dose."

Some wise person said, " We cease to love ourselves if no one loves us."

One pediatrician describes an unusual treatment for newborn babies who do not gain weight
as they should.
On the baby's chart the doctor invariably writes: " This baby is to be loved every three hours."

In order to remain healthy, people of every age need this universal medicine.
Love does not actually cure the many illnesses that result from insecurity, loneliness, or rejection.
But it can make us want to get well.
Love does not change the problems we face, but it makes us stronger
so that we can deal with the problem.

There are several categories of people that we should love, and these are the same
category of people that we are most tempted not to love.

We must love our neighbors!
We are admonished by Jesus to love our neighbors, and this continues to be
one of our toughest challenges.

I read about a college student who was riding her bicycle to her home from the
University of Oregon In Eugene when she was struck from behind by a car.
She was thrown to the roadside, and her leg was fractured, and she lay helpless
while numerous drivers slow down to look at her, but no one stopped.

Fifteen minutes passed before a grocery store clerk saw her through the store window,
and came to help her.

This kind of story is so familiar that psychologist refer to the behavior as the
" unresponsive bystander phenomenon."

The greatest number and most damaging of such behaviors do not, however,
involve distant neighbors as much as it does close neighbors.
The pain of people who work close to us or in our office is more likely to be neglected
as a person like Kitty Genovese, who was murdered in Queens, New York, in 1963
while more than 30 people watched.
No one offered to help, and no one called the police.

It seems that the closer we live together, the more we withdraw into our own cocoons.
One of the reasons for a lack of neighborly love is the natural difficulty we have
in feeling the pain of others unless we have felt that same kind of pain.

Those of you who have visited the intensive care waiting room know that it is a different world.
No one is a stranger.
People help one another.
They grieve with one another.
Vanity and pretense vanish.
Everyone is focused on the next doctor's report or on the next telephone call.
In this anxious stillness it becomes clear that loving someone else is what life is all about.

Why should it take the intensive care waiting room to teach us to forget our irritations
and love one another?

We must love our enemies!
So far in our last century, our world had more than 220 wars.
There are always wars going on somewhere in our world.
Why?

Bertrand Russell said, " Few can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or religion."

Jesus was not naive about human nature.
He knew that even Christians would have enemies - that is people who bug us and hurt us,
and cause us discomfort and aggravate us.

Jesus said that we must decide (even when we do not feel like it) to resolve our feelings
by taking intentional, specific, loving actions toward those persons -- even if they don't deserve it.
We must love them as Jesus loves them, and as God loves them.

We must love other church members!
" Love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor,"
Paul wrote the Romans. (Romans 12:10)

" And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another,"
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians. (1 Thessalonians 3: 12)
His need to give this advice infers that the Romans and Thessalonians were not loving
one another as they should.
This admonition by Paul is needed today.

About 1140 AD, Peter, Abbot of Cluny, wrote these words to Father Bernard,
" You perform all the difficult religious duties: you fast, you watch, you suffer;
But ... you do not love."

Most all of our failures in working with other Christians boil down to one problem,
and that is a failure to love.

When a church becomes an extended family -- willing to laugh, cry, celebrate together,
willing to be a crutch when others need support and become a springboard when others
need encouragement, and truly love one another.
Those churches will grow both numerically and spiritually.

We must love our family!

I read of a pastor who was visiting some people who spoke in glowing words about their neighbor,
who was also a member of this pastor's church.
They talked at great length about what a good neighbor and friend this man was.
And yet, the pastor knew that this wonderful neighbor hated his own brother and sister.
He hated them because of their appearance, the decisions they made, and for the things
they did to him when they were children.

It is often easier to make friends with your neighbor than with your own family.
We must love our family!

We must love the lonely!
An old story tells of a conversation between a psychiatrist and a man who was unhappy
about being discharged following years of analysis.
" You're cured, " said the doctor.

" Some cure!" Complained the man.
" When I first came here, I was Napoleon Bonaparte. Now I'm nobody."

The world is filled with lonely people who feel like nobody cares.
They feel as though they are nobodies.

There are many people around us who are looking for friendship.
Yet, day after day the friendship they send out comes back stamped " addressee unknown."
Many times this is an older person trapped in the isolation of age or illness.
But just as often it is a youth who it is left out.

Crowds are not enough!
Without someone who understands us and loves us and accepts us, a stadium full of people
is as lonely as a cemetery.
A cure for this lonely person is one Christian who is sensitive enough to see the loneliness
and compassionate enough to care.

Christians, our love must move beyond thinking and turn into action.
While traveling in Africa, an evangelist and his group drove far into the bush country
to visit a chief and his family.
The evangelist said that he was especially touched by the chief because the chief
instantly saw through the facade of the visit.

The chief asked them, " Did you come to help or just to take pictures?"

As Christians we sometimes translate: " love your neighbor" into " think positive thoughts
about your neighbor.
Avoid doing damage.
Don't steal his lawnmower, or sleep with his or her spouse.

But love in the Christian sense is more than a withholding of harm.
When Jesus used the verb, love, He meant, " Help your neighbor."
In other words, reach out to them and do some positive good for them.

Ralph Sockman used to tell about a conversation Julia Ward Howe had one day
with her distinguished senator from Massachusetts.
She asked him for help in the case of a person who desparately needed some help.

The senator answered, " Julia, I've become so busy I can no longer concern myself
with individuals."

Julia replied, " That is quite remarkable. Even God hasn't reached that stage yet."

We must love enough to refrain from blaming!
A sign at the entrance to the San Diego zoo says:
" Please do not annoy, torment, pester, plague, molest, worry, badger, harass, heckle,
persecute, irk, bully, vex, grate, bother, tease, tantalize, or ruffle the animals."

Many people would like to hang that sign at the entrance of their lives!
The people who love them keep trying to improve them by blaming them,
not knowing that a thimble full of affirmation usually will do more good
than a truckload of blame.

" It's his fault. It's her fault. It's their fault. It's your fault!"
That kind of habitual speech pattern is usually a way of saying,
" It's not my fault."

We must continue to love even when we do not approve of another's behavior.
Sometimes, it is our tendency to lavish love when we are pleased with a another's behavior,
and to withhold love when we are displeased with another's behavior.

We must love unconditionally, even if we disapprove of the actions of our friends and loved ones.
We can continue to love unconditionally and at the same time express disapproval
about a particular behavior.

Jesus gave the same prescription in Matthew 18: 15-17.
Christians, whether we approve or disapprove of a behavior, we must keep on loving.
Few things get better without love, and most things get better with it.

We must love enough to confront!

In what sounds like a mythical story, the daughter of an educational psychology expert
had become a continual discipline problem.
One morning at breakfast, she pushed her cereal away, announcing that she did not
like that kind of breakfast.

"Well, darling, what would you like?" The father asked.

" I want a worm, " she whimpered.

So, daddy went to the garden, and got a fat worm, washed it, and laid it on her plate.
She screamed, " But I want it cooked!"

After the worm was rolled in butter and fried it, she demanded to her daddy,
"But I want you to eat half of it."

So, daddy dutifully divided the fried worm and managed to eat his half.
After that, the daughter howled and screamed,
" But that was the half I wanted."

Love does not mean that we give our children -- or anyone else everything they want
or do everything they ask us to do.
Genuine love is sometimes tough, and we must keep on loving while at the same time
firmly saying, " No way! That's wrong! That will hurt you, me, or someone else.
That is a road down which I will not walk."

Do we love enough to refrain from dominating?

When a flood in Oklahoma drove many residents from their homes, several citizens
provided emergency lodging.
One woman went to live with a minister and his Wife for several days.

After a couple of weeks, she said to a friend, " I appreciate those people giving me a place to live,
But I don't think I can stand to stay there much longer.
That lady tries to run my life.
She makes all kinds of decisions about how I need to fix up my house.
She also instructs me about how to talk with the Federal Disaster Center.
I don't like it.
But I feel obligated because they have given a a place in their home."

A loving but dominating mother or father can smother loves intended results.
A merciful the dominating caregiver can also smother love.
As Christians, we must avoid stepping across the dotted line between compassion
and controlling -- between caring and conquering.

Jesus said, " You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22: 39)
We are to love one another. (John 13: 34-35)
We must love one another!
We please God when we love one another.

Sermon adapted by Dr. Harold L White