Dissidents for Love--October 30, 2020
"Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another." [1 John 3:13-16]
Yesterday, in the place where I live, the local newspaper's social media feed had a local commenter proudly say he was calling for his friends in the KKK to come to town and have a march and to teach a "good old fashioned 1950s lesson." Literally. Sincerely.
Earlier that same day, I was driving down the main street near where one of the congregations I serve is, and there, flying proudly two doors past the Dollar General was the Confederate flag--one of three I saw either on houses or vehicles in the space of about an hour of doing errands. Meanwhile, the story on the national news playing in my car was an interview with someone in a self-styled "militia" group that is making plans for fighting a second civil war. Honestly. Truly.
Beneath all of that was the background noise on the radio, on the TV, and on social media that seems to go on all the time these days: the sheer hatred for people who look different, think different, vote different, or love differently. All of that in the space of twenty-four hours. Or, as I am getting used to calling it, an ordinary Thursday.
We are all so used to the mean-ness, even as the volume turns up day by day the closer and closer we get to the end of election season, that maybe we have just decided that this kind of raw animosity can't be avoided... maybe it's just the nature of living in a "vibrant democracy"... or maybe it's always been this way. And so we are left with the choice either to just leave that noise in the background and get used to it, or we stick our heads in the sand and pretend it isn't there, or we are tempted to fight fire with fire and join the meanness and cruelty with some of our own. That'll show 'em, right?
I would like to propose an alternative: we can refuse to play the game. We can resist the deep-rooted, encroaching hatred that is all around us and right next door by boldly practicing love and calling out the vile hatred that has free rein these days as opposed to the way of Jesus: that is to say, to name it as anti-Christ. Whether it is motivated by racism, partisan gamesmanship, or any of a thousand kinds of bigotry, we can resist it by refusing its terms and offering an alternative. We can say "No" to the many systems that feed and fuel our divisions--which, in turn, parasitically feed on the meanness that comes out of those division. We can be dissidents against all of it--dissidents for love.
I am convinced that the first disciples of Jesus understood their calling in similar terms. You hear it here in these words from the book we call First John, a book written to a community that was feeling the hatred of the world around them, and yet which was called to respond to it with love. Responding to hatred with love doesn't mean you are endorsing or permitting the hatred shown to you or voiced around you--it means you refuse to sink to the level of hatred yourself, and you respond by standing up for the ones who are targeted by the hatred. It means you don't let the folks threatening violence provoke you into threatening violence back. It means you don't let them drag you into name-calling if they call names first. It means we teach our children differently, and we help them to see why we are doing things differently.
The early church very definitely saw themselves as a minority voice that was called to be different from the world--and in particular, the empire--around it. They understood that Rome saw them as a threat because they announced that Caesar didn't bet their allegiance, the markets saw them as a danger because Christians valued people over profits, and the Respectable Religious Leaders saw them as troublemakers because Christians included all the undesirables and unacceptable people from every nation and language and culture, just as they were. And even though the early church knew it had a target on its back, they also knew--because of voices like First John here--that answering all that hostility with hatred of their own was counter to the way of Jesus. We are, after all, followers of Jesus, and that means Jesus isn't merely our mascot, but the quarterback and the coach--he calls the plays, and he sets the strategy. And if Jesus says we respond to hatred by offering love (which he does), then that's what we do. And if we catch folks who name the name of Jesus or drape themselves in the trappings of our religious faith also trafficking in that kind of hatred and self-absorbed meanness that is so prevalent these days, First John tells us to call it out as counter to the way of Jesus. We are called to be dissidents against the many, many voices that want us to think that such self-centered "Me-and-My-Group First" hatred is both acceptable and inevitable. And in truth, it is neither.
It doesn't have to be this way. The world doesn't have to be marked by such raw hostility, such naked fear and suspicion, and such opportunistic division. We can't force others to be kind--or even merely polite or civil--but we can offer an alternative. We can model that there is another way. We can show that other way in the efforts we make to seek the good of people who are different from us, in the ways we ask the ones we disagree with to help us understand their perspectives, in the ways we refuse to add fuel to the fires around us and starve the hatred of oxygen to keep burning. We will show it in the choices we make--from the small acts of paying for the coffee of the person after you in line at the drive-through window, to the big policy choices we support that shape the character of our whole community or country--that put the needs and interests of others before our own. We will be a reflection of the love that has first been shown to us in Jesus--just like First John says, "we know love by this, that he laid down his life for us," and therefore we will lay down our lives for one another. That doesn't just mean a willingness to die for someone, but a willingness to live for others--to make choices in ways that put their interests before our own profits, that seek to help others even when it doesn't benefit us directly, and that model the same for our children and grandchildren. All of that is what it can look like to dissent from the hatred it seems so many around us think is inevitable. All of that is what it might look like in this moment to be dissidents for love.
We will need each other for this--it is downright impossible to do it alone for very long, after all. But together, in whatever ways we can be connected--in person, through prayer across the miles, in the messages of encouragement we can send each other--we can resist the power of hatred and embody the alternative. That is to say, we can embody the way of Jesus.
It is going to mean we not let ourselves become desensitized to the hatred around us. We are not given permission to shrug our shoulders and say, "That's just how it is these days," nor are we given permission to run away to some imaginary place where everyone is nice all the time or to just turn off the news because it makes us uncomfortable. We are called to stare the meanness in the face and kiss it on the lips back to startle it awake so that hardened hearts will be transformed.
I don't know what will await us in this new day--but I can guess. And in the face of it, we can love. That is our dissidence. That is our answer.
Lord God, give us the courage and strength to answer the casual hatred around us with love.
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