What Makes Us Stand Out--October 3, 2024

What Makes Us Stand Out--October 3, 2024

"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." [1 John 3:13-15]

We cannot change what the world thinks about us--at least not directly. That is not in our power.

But we do have remarkable power that comes from being free from fussing about whether we are liked or disliked, received or rejected, cheered or mocked, by anybody else. There is great power in being free simply to say, "I am not ruled by your impressions of me. I do not depend on being judged successful or great or impressive by anybody else." That frees us simply to love. Always to love.

For starters here, John seems to think that maybe it's not so bad a thing to be hated by the world, if "the world" is John's way of naming all the forces and systems that are turned away from God and bent in on themselves. Maybe in that case, it's something of a compliment to be hated by "the world." In any case, we cannot change how the world perceives and receives us Christians--we can only affect ourselves and how we act and react in such a world. We can only answer the question, "Are we practicing love toward others or not?" Whether the world approves or disapproves of our commitment to a radical, self-giving love for all or not, we are give the power to keep on loving, and the freedom to do it whether the systems, empires, and powers of the day like it or not.

In other words, if "the world" is bent on hating us, we can only make sure that it is an unrequited hate--a hate that will go unanswered with more of the same. We can only commit ourselves not to play by the rules the world sets if it is determined to put us in its sights. Whether the world likes it or not, we will not respond to hostility with hatred or violence. John reminds us that we have passed from those things, and that we are now called to be a community that responds to outward hostility and hatred with suffering love.

But maybe we need to back up for a moment and ask why the world would hate us in the first place--or at least, why would "the world" have hated Christians 2,000 years ago? The New Testament has a habit of assuming that Christians should be ready to meet with hostility from the world. But we live in a country and in an age where many Christians blend right in--where, aside from where they happen to be on some Sunday mornings, there is very little that makes them stand out enough for the world to be able to identify them at all. It's sad to say, but church folks can be just as bigoted, hateful, apathetic, and power-hungry as anybody else, such that it seems like our faith makes no difference in our lives or witness.

And on the other hand, sometimes it seems that some Christians go out of their way to be different, or to stand out in the world, but they do it in ways that don't seem particularly Christ-like--when there is resentful anger, boastful entitlement, bitter resentment, and Respectable Religious smugness, for example.

We live in an age, then, when some Christians seem only to hear the part about being different from the world that they miss being different in ways that are like Jesus; and we also live in a time when some Christians are so sure they don't want to be labeled as fanatics that they back away from anything that makes them even the slightest bit different from their neighbors--who don't want to stand out, speak up, question their priorities, or risk losing "likes" or "friends" on social media for stepping out in the love of Jesus for those it is easy to ignore. We seem to have crowing Christians who just squawk angry squawks, and chameleon Christians who blend in with the wallpaper. In other words, it seems we have plenty of Christians who couldn't be hated by the world because the world can't tell the different between them and itself, and some Christians who might well be hated by the world--but it's hard to tell if the world hates them for being Christians or for being jerks about it. And that's a problem: either of those, the crow or the chameleon approach, is still allowing the world to set the rules and living under the world's supposed power.

Remember, it's an ambiguous thing to be hated by the world--as much as "the world" often is opposed to the Reign of God, there are times when the world isn't all that far off the mark. It took a while, but the world came to learn to reject Nazism and apartheid and segregation, for example. The vast majority of the world's governments have all agreed to ban torture or the targeting of civilians; we are united against disease like malaria, cancer, or AIDS, and have widespread support to help all people get access to drinkable water. The world's legal codes almost all uniformly reject murder and rape and theft. These are all positive things for the world at large to engage in. Just because "the world" rejects something, then, doesn't make it a good thing.

So that leaves us with two questions: if there doesn't seem to be much hostility between you and the world, why is that, and should there actually be more tension there between the way you live your life and the way the world expects us to fall in line? And then second, if there is hostility between you and the world, what is the reason? Are we faithfully living out the Good News and stirring up trouble because the world can't stand the news of radically free grace in Jesus Christ apart from our earning or deserving it--or are we hated by "the world" because we are acting like pompous, self-righteous jerks who use their religion like a weapon to beat other people with, or like a cover for their own self-serving ends?

So again, back to the question of why the first Christians were hated. They didn't have the power, position, or money to launch a public-relations campaign or to advocate for certain candidates for office--remember, they lived under the rule of an empire, not a democracy. The early Christians did not expect the empire to make room for them to teach their faith in schools (both because there was no public education system as we know it, and because Christians didn't assume that the empire would their work for them). And they did not protest when they didn't get special treatment from the empire--they simply gave their witness to whoever would listen. So many of the things that publicly known Christians in our country and our day are vocal about simply wouldn't have made any sense to the early Christians at all. The early Christians didn't ask for the right to pray in schools from the government--they simply prayed and wore their faith on their sleeve whether the empire liked it or not, because they believed they had a power the empire knew nothing about. And they were perfectly willing to be thrown in jail for it--but they would not react with hatred or violence back. The early Christians walked around the streets of the empire like they were really the subjects of another King--which, of course, they were--and as though they didn't expect the empire to understand their differing allegiances. That was their freedom, and that was their power--they simply didn't have to abide by the acceptance or rejection of the powers of the day. They were not in bed with Caesar, and that allowed them the freedom and the power to speak up against Rome when necessary, to support the systems of the day when appropriate, and in all things to go on living in radical love regardless of whether it was popular or not, and regardless of whether the empire approved.

That, in the end, is what made the "world" of the early Christians so hostile to them--it was like the whole Christian community was willing to say that the emperor was wearing no clothes--that the world didn't really have authority over them, and that the empire wasn't really in charge of granting them rights: God was. The early Christians earned the hatred of the Roman Empire in those first centuries because they called the empire's bluff and in effect said, "You don't have real power over us--not over our hearts, our souls, and our allegiances. And even if you kill us, you don't even really have power over us then, because our Lord can and does raise the dead. And we will show love in the mean time anyway." The Romans didn't know what to do with that. 

Angry enemy hordes? The Romans could kill those with armies, and they could feel good about it because they believed the angry enemy hordes were clearly disturbers of the peace and threats to the rule of law. Submissive, defeated slaves?  They could keep them under their thumbs, too, and feel good about it because they felt they were preserving the system that kept the Pax Romana going. But Christians? They wouldn't pick up swords to fight the centurions, but they would not let the Romans intimidate them either. "The world" of those ancient Christians just didn't know what to make of them--except to know that they were different in a threatening kind of way (threatening in the same way that the boy in the story is a threat to the dignity of the empire when he announces that the emperor is naked), and because the empire feared that difference, it came to hate the early Christians.

Flashing forward back to our day, then, the question for us is not, "How can we make the world like us more?" but neither is it, "How can we get the world to hate us more?" Instead, the question is, How can we live in the freedom, power, and love of Jesus? Or to put it differently, How can we come to take the Reign of God that Jesus has shown us so seriously that we are no longer driven by concerns about what other people think about us? If I am completely captivated by the love of Jesus, I won't care who knows about it, and I won't care about whether that kind of love for all will get me in trouble. That is a power and a freedom the systems and empires of the world will not understand. I belong to a different Lord, one who trumps the authority of every empire, and even of death. Today, then, these words from John both give us the courage to risk standing out from the world's ways once again to live as an alternative, and give us a picture of how we are supposed to stand out--by being a community that loves. Love will make us stand out, in the end, and whether the world likes it or not, we will love the way we have been loved first, by Jesus our Lord.

Lord Jesus, give us such confident faith in your Reign that we are no longer swayed by fears of what others will think of us. And give us such deep love that the ways we stand out will be witnesses to your kingdom rather than angry squawking.