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"How Do People Know We Are Christians?"Four short sermons delivered by youth members of Second Presbyterian Church on Youth Sunday 2007
How hard is it for us to change our negative opinions of people? Psychologists have found that for every negative piece of information we discover about someone, it takes seven pieces of positive information to make up for it. We are a society quick to judge, and slow to take back those prejudgments. And it is so much easier to come up with reasons to hate people than it is to love them. But how can we love people that we, well, hate? Before we begin to answer this question, it is important to first have an understanding of what love is. Love is possibly the most vital aspect of being a Christian. After all, the song says "They will know we are Christians by our love." Love is so essential that 1 Corinthians 13:2 says "If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing." No matter what we may do in life, if we don’t have love, we will be incomplete. But how do we characterize love? The dictionary definition of love is "an intense positive emotion of affection or devotion." It can describe something that is a small pleasure, such as a great movie, or something as major as the love we have for our family. Yet there are different aspects of love: we feel different kinds of love towards the different people in our lives. There are Greek words to describe the four main types of love: philos love, which is felt towards friends and siblings; storge (stor-gay) love that is between a parent and child; eros love that is passionate and filled with lust; and agape (a-gah-pay) love, which is pure and unconditional. Agape love is what is strived for in every long-term relationship, and of course it is the kind of love God has for us. So we recognize that there are several different dimensions of love, but this passage brings about the question: what kind of love can we possibly have towards enemies? I mean, let's face it, you can't imagine having any love whatsoever towards the guy in the car next to you who cuts you off when switching lanes or the couple that makes out in front of your locker so that you can't get to it. These kinds of people are usually the ones I think of when I hear the word 'enemies': the people who get under our skin on a day to day basis. I thought about why it is that we come to dislike others under these everyday circumstances, and came up with three main reasons. The first is that someone has done us wrong and made us feel victimized. By hating these people, we assert that we are superior to them because we don't do whatever it is they did to make us hate them. Of course you're better than that guy who swerved in your lane, because you would never do that. You don't take into account that maybe he didn't know he was in a turn only lane, or that you've probably cut someone off before, even if by accident. We just assume people like this guy are jerks, and give ourselves power over them, therefore making us feel better about ourselves. Another reason we might hate someone is that we are jealous, if even secretly, of what they have and are frustrated that we don't/can't have it. That girl has a boyfriend to make out with in front of someone's locker but you don't? It's just not fair because she's no better than you, so why should she have something you don't? In these situations, also, we hate someone to justify our feelings of inadequacy about ourselves. Also, we might hate someone before they've even done something to offend us, such as when we stereotype. When we stop to think about categorizing people based on their appearance, we realize how awful and unfair it is, and we certainly wouldn't want anyone basing their image of us on how we dress or what kind of music we like. Yet when we first see someone dressed in all black, we usually don’t stop and think about the unfairness of stereotyping. We automatically classify them as a 'goth' based solely on their clothes, before we even know them. Yet the reason why we continue stereotyping even though we know it is wrong is because we are sometimes right about our first impressions. By classifying someone into a certain category, it makes us feel good because we already know exactly who they are and what they think. Therefore, it is once again to our own personal gain that we dislike someone. Okay, so even though we recognize why we hate others, it still seems extreme to have to love them when it is so much easier and beneficial to us to hate them. To begin with, we must understand that there is a difference between like and love. We don't have to like or approve of something a person does to love them. I have experienced this many times with my younger brother on occasions where we haven't gotten along. One of the earliest times I can remember is when I was about six. My brother threw a plastic toy camera at my forehead and it bled on our new couch. At that moment, I certainly did not like my brother and was not above retaliating against him. But that doesn't mean that I ever stopped loving him or wouldn't defend him in a second if someone tried to harm him. That's because I knew him well enough to not let his one violent action define the way I thought of him. But with strangers who infuriate us, the only impression we have of them is that one action, so we automatically make that our entire notion of who they are. We don't take circumstances into account. The truth is that at one time or another, we've all done something that makes us worthy of being hated by another person. But as Christians, we seek to recognize and prevent those times. In the end, we strive to see the good in everyone and love them even if we don't agree with them. In To Kill a Mockingbird, one of my favorite books, a young girl is growing up in the South during the 1930's, and she sees hatred and stereotyping firsthand. Throughout the novel, she views her neighbor as a scary and mean man because of the rumors about him and his reclusive lifestyle. Yet at the end of the book, once she has an opportunity to talk with him, she comes to realize that he is a kind and gentle man who has a great affection for her. She tells her father how nice their neighbor turned out to be, and he responds by saying, "Most people are..when you finally see them." We must get to know someone before we can truly judge them, and if we were to sit down and talk with all the people that are our supposed 'enemies,' we would most likely come to find that they aren't as bad as we thought they were. No matter what, though, if someone is good enough to be loved by God, then they're good enough to be loved by us.
Caroline Miller's Sermon: I have attended Second Presbyterian Church for as long as I can remember. I have seen our church’s commitment to love others many times, through building houses for Habitat for Humanity, visiting shut-ins, and donating blood at blood drives. My family and I witnessed our church’s love when I was seven years old. I was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a severe bone marrow disease, and I was hospitalized for several months. Members of the church were always at the hospital to visit and support us. I was cured after I received a bone marrow transplant from my brother Laurence, and I’m thankful for his love for me. My family and I are still grateful to the church, and we continue to stay involved at Second Presbyterian. Ever since I was in 6th grade, I have participated in Second Presbyterian’s youth group on Sunday and Wednesday nights. An important part of the youth group’s activities is community service. Twice a month the youth group visits a local nursing home, called Cambridge Place. The residents there don’t have many visitors, and they’re always happy to see us. The youth group spends time playing games and talking with them. The youth have also volunteered at a homeless shelter, where we help serving meals. Our work hasn’t been easy, and we sometimes wish we could be doing something else instead. However, we have also seen that our efforts have made a difference, not only in the lives of people we serve, but in our lives as well. Loving others is difficult when we are faced with challenges every day. We are still grieving from the shootings at Virginia Tech, and everyone who is thinking about it feels sadness, anger, and guilt. In the week following these tragic events I observed many other universities supporting Virginia Tech through thoughts and prayers. I see that God is with us and will help comfort us. Now I realize that when I leave for college this fall, I need to reach out to others and share God’s love. Following Jesus’ commandment to love others is never easy. As humans, we always fall short of what He expects from us. All we can do is pray that Jesus will guide us, and He will help us to show love through our actions. As I close, let us remember that the Bible tells us again and again to love others, so hear the words from God once more from our first Scripture reading. "You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord." Let us remember what the Bible teaches us and love one another.
Andrew Leemhuis's Sermon Upon a brief search in my iTunes library, out of 3000 some songs there are 136 which contain the word love. Further inspection reveals that most of these songs deal with love between two people other than the exceptions like The Beatles’ "All You Need is Love" or John Denver’s "Perhaps Love" when taken slightly out of context. But how many songs are about love of friends or between all people? In a larger sense, how do we extend love beyond our own circles? Over the summer I happened to be privileged enough to become a foreign exchange student to Japan in a suburb called Kasugai on the outskirts of Nagoya (the fourth largest city in Japan and just about in the middle of the country). During the 6 weeks that I stayed there, I got the chance to attend school at and elementary school, a middle school, and a high school, meeting many new friends and people there as well as being able to briefly travel to Tokyo and Kyoto on a few short adventures, among other places. During my small stay in Japan over the previous summer, I found that love is a thing that very much does extend beyond culture barriers and, heh, language. It wasn’t the big trips to the temples or the museums that I liked most about Japan, it was the ability to interact with people of a different culture and find out what it was like to live as part of a family there. Though it may have taken a little embarrassment like the many times I struggled in speaking (and usually doing that wrong) or making cultural faux pas, but, with a little lee way on both my host family’s part and mine, friendship was still able to grow. Though I was a somewhat tall, perhaps somewhat timid foreigner, we were still able to have a fun time doing basic activities as they allowed me to experience life in their culture. But it seems that the hardest part about love isn’t a language boundary or a society’s differences. It’s also about loving those that are disagreeable or whose beliefs are different than your own. How easy is it to make fun of someone for what they think or believe. Politics is almost riddled with it, and to an extent comedy is based off it. Indeed, it seems that our society even embraces this, some to a greater extent than others. In Japan, though I was a foreigner and didn’t speak well, I would be greeted by almost everyone (with an exuberant おはよう) as I would walk into school and no one was ever rude or mean towards me. At the end of my stay I was unable to go anywhere without being recognized by someone, and even if I inadvertently breached a social norm I would still be given the same level of respect. There seems to be miles of difference between Japan and America in this area. I have observed how cruel kids (and adults) can be to foreigners who are aren’t completely able to communicate or who have different physical appearances. But what if we stopped focusing on what we dislike about people, about their beliefs, about their lifestyle, but instead focused on who they are, what their strengths are, and how each is a beautiful person to learn from. It can be a very difficult thing to do sometimes, but by living through others’ eyes, we can become more aware of who we are and where we want to be. Did not Jesus live with mainly the outcasts of society; those who weren’t liked or who suffered from disease or were disliked for any number of other reasons? Perhaps people will never be able to fully resolve their differences, but I believe that by showing love to others, we may receive it in return. Caroline Caudill's Sermon: At this point, you now know what love is. You know you must lend a hand and love your enemies. But, don’t you wish that could be easy? I only know one place where this has been "easy". I feel the most love when I got to Burnamwood, our Presbyterian Church camp in Irvine, Kentucky. Everyone at Burnamwood is loving toward each other. Everyone accepts you for who you are and loves you like you’re family. When I drive down the dirt road my heart starts beating really fast, I get excited about the upcoming week or weekend. I start feeling very relaxed. I get a feeling of the presence of Jesus there in the car, a feeling of love. I feel a sense of peace and all the worries that I have are lost. At worship and closing circle, I look around and see everyone, all holding hands, and I know that this is the most perfect place I could ever be at that moment in time. There is a unity at camp, that we are all one under God. When leaving camp, I always feel refreshed. I feel renewed with love. I feel like I can go back to the real world, with my hectic life, and still feel relaxed and calm and feel the love of Jesus. Yet I always wonder why the world can’t be like camp. Why can’t we all love each other and get along? You may be asking now, how can we do that? Well it’s not going to be easy. Actually it will be very hard. An enemy can be anyone who you dislike at any point in time. Sometimes it is someone who you have never been able to get a long with, and sometimes it can be your sibling or your best friend. I know many times when I have gotten angry with my sister. Times when she gets to choose the movie we watch and it’s one I don’t like, or times when we’re fighting and she would get my mom on her side and I would get in trouble, (even though of course it was never my fault). At those times it felt like we were enemies. However, in the end we would always make up and figure out that what we were fighting about wasn’t even worth fighting over. Sometimes it was hard to listen to our mom or dad telling us to be nice to each other, but eventually we did listen, because we knew it was the right thing to do. That is like what we should do with the enemies that we come face to face with everyday. We should listen to God, our father, telling us to be nice to each other, because we know it’s the right thing to do. Loving our enemies can be the hardest thing we will ever do. No one is perfect and it takes a lot of hard work. The first thing to do is pray. Prayer is a key part in knowing how to love our enemies. Talking to God daily helps us. God can help us deal with the people we don’t like. He can help us figure out how to act around them when they are not being kind to us. If someone is making us mad or doing something we don’t agree with, we can say a little prayer to God and ask him to help us stay calm and act loving toward that person. We learn in the Bible that Jesus taught us how to love our enemies. So, one way for us to learn how to love each other is to stay involved with the church like coming to church every week, going to Sunday school, youth group, being involved in volunteer work like the youth’s commitment to Cambridge Place the past four years. It reminds us of God’s love and it keeps us active doing God’s work and learning about him. Other Christians will also teach us how to love. When we are around other Christian people, they can influence us to be a good person and do good things. They will show us God’s love through things they do and say and will help us be the best Christians we can be. These are some ways we can learn to spread our love with everyone-even the person on the road that cuts us off or the couple making out in front of our locker. Christ loved tax collectors, the outsiders, the unclean…and we should try to do the same. Like Andrew said, we need to stop focusing on what we dislike about people, and start focusing on their strengths. Please pull out your bulletin and look at the picture on the front. The picture is titled "Saying Grace" by Norman Rockwell. It is a picture of a boy and a lady (maybe his grandmother) praying before their meal. Everyone else around them is looking at them / staring at them. The world around them keeps moving on as they stop to pray. Sometimes our lives get so busy we forget to pray. In the picture the two prayers have stopped their busy lives to pray-while the rest of the world watches. We might be embarrassed to pray in front of a group of people who are watching us in a restaurant or other public place. The people in the picture aren’t though. Some people look at the picture and think that the people looking at them are just thinking they are weird or strange. But when I look at the picture I like to think that maybe the boy and lady are influencing the people. They are showing the world that they love God and that they can pray at all times and in all places. Our theme for youth group this past year is based off this Norman Rockwell picture and we have talked about how people know we are Christians. Everything we do affects the way people see us. But one of the most difficult things is loving our enemies. When we show people that we are Christians it can influence their lives and it might make them like what they see and hear. It could change all of our lives in a positive way, making the world a better place. Maybe even make the world more like Camp Burnamwood, a place where everyone loves God and each other, a place where we learn how to be better Christians. We all could strive to be more faithful, it is something we all need to work on daily. So…how do people know we are Christians? |
Laurel Wilson, Caroline Miller