Genuine Love (A sermon in a hurricane)

**Note - Due to the impending hurricane, services at Emanuel are cancelled for Sunday August 28. Please make appropriate preparations and stay safe.**

(Scriptures:Exodus 3:1-15, Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 16:21-28)

Genuine Love

St. Francis of Assisi is probably one of the most venerated Roman Catholic saints. Born to a wealthy family, he felt a strong call from God to give up his worldly possessions, to live in poverty, and to serve the poor. He felt a strong connection to nature and once preached to a flock of birds. During the Crusades, he sought to make peace with Muslim Sultan of Egypt. His life was characterized by a deep desire to pattern his life as closely as possible to that of Jesus Christ.

We are continuing with Paul’s teaching in Romans. Remember last week, we read about offering ourselves as a living sacrifice, about being transformed by the renewal of our minds. We spoke of how this transformation is a gradual process, the work of a lifetime, that we should not be surprised to encounter obstacles to our transformation within us and outside us. This process of transformation is a lifelong process of letting go of our attachments to the world and its ways of doing things, and letting God remake us into the new creation God would have us be.

Paul’s lofty phrases in last week’s reading may leave us asking – what does this transformation look like? How will we know when God is at work within us? What will our transformed lives look like? And so in today’s reading Paul gives us some very tangible, down to earth, brass tacks, nitty-gritty, rubber-hitting-the-road pictures of what the new life in Christ looks like.

“Let love be genuine…. love one another with mutual affection, outdo each other in showing honor.” Eugene Peterson paraphrases this opening phrase “Love from the center of who you are….discover beauty in everyone.” Another translation says, “Don’t just pretend you love others. Really love them.” And if we really love others, we will love them with our actions as well as with our words.

“Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good.” A word of caution here: the verse says to hate what is evil, not to hate people who are evil. In our society – and even in the church – it’s easy, all too easy, to designate some persons – Muslims, gays and lesbians, atheists – as being beyond the reach of God’s love, as people whom we’re allowed, even encouraged, to hate, or, as in the words of one presidential candidate, saying that this group or that group of persons is “of Satan” - but that is absolutely *not* what this verse is telling us to do. We are to love everyone, not just our friends, but our enemies, not just those who help us, but those whose actions hurt us. We are not qualified to know what plans God has in mind for those around us, or where they are on their spiritual journey. We are on the invitation committee, inviting others to the new life in Christ, not the selection committee to determine who’s saved and who’s damned. No human being is qualified to say that any person or group of persons is “of Satan” – in fact, that line of thought has the potential to lead to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, attributing God’s work, the work of God’s Spirit in the lives of our neighbors, to Satan. Yes, we should hate what is evil – our culture of greed and selfishness in which the rich get richer and the poor get trampled, the gun violence that ruins so many lives in Philadelphia, our society’s neglect of the crumbling public housing and urban schools in which young people lose hope for a better tomorrow – we should hate these cirumstances, and oppose them, and pray and work to change them. But under no circumstances are we to hate other human beings. Under no circumstances.

And Paul goes on, “Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.” We need a quality of faith which will keep on keeping on even through times of discouragement – like Father McNamee in North Philadelphia, whom I mentioned last week, slogging through day after difficult day, year after impossible year in serving one of the poorest parishes and neighborhoods in the region.

Paul continues – “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Here we see that there are no limits on those to whom we should show love. Those who persecute us we should bless, those whom we count as enemies we are to feed them and give them something to drink. We are not to repay the evil of other with evil of our own, but are to overcome evil with good. The principle of an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. We cannot use the devil’s weapons to overcome the devil. Someone must act in love to break the cycle of escalating hatred and abuse – and as Christians, we are called to be that someone.

This is what Jesus was talking about, in different words, in today’s Gospel reading. Remember last week that Peter had claimed Jesus as the Messiah, the son of the Living God. So far so good. But then Jesus began to elaborate on what that would mean for himself – suffering, death, but on the third day resurrection. In response to Peter’s objection, Jesus told the disciples that they, like Jesus, must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him. To take up the cross and follow Jesus means to deny ourselves, to let go of our own projects and priorities in favor of the work of God’s kingdom, to let go of our own comfort in favor of serving those in need whom God sends our way. To take up the cross means to love our enemies, to bless those who persecute us, to respond with love to abuse from others – as Jesus did. We must avoid giving non-Christians opportunity to say, as Gandhi was quoted, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” If we are disciples of Christ, there should be at least some faint resemblance between our lives and the life of the Christ we claim to follow.

None of this is easy. This genuine love Paul calls us to show is not weak and sentimental. It’s a durable love that goes on even when people are at their very worst – just as God continued to love the world that sent Jesus to the cross.

I’ll close with these words from the prayer of St Francis, which captures the essence of today’s readings:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.


O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen
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