Moses Mendelson tells the story of a woman who came to a great teacher and asked him: "Teacher, how do I know which religion is the right one?"
The teacher replied with a story of a great and wise King with three sons. This King had a precious gift--a magic ring that gave him great compassion, generosity, and a spirit of kindness. As he was dying, each of his sons went to him and asked the father for the ring after his death. And he promised to each of the sons that he would give him the ring. Now how could he possibly do that for all three sons? Here’s what he did. Before he died he called in the finest jewelry maker of the land and asked him to make two identical copies of the ring. After his death each of his sons was presented with a ring.
Well, it wasn’t long before each of the sons figured out that his brothers also had a ring and therefore two of them had to be fakes. Only one of them could be the genuine article. And so they went before a judge and asked the judge to help them determine which was the authentic ring. Then they could determine who the proper heir was.
The judge, however, could not distinguish among the three rings. And so he said: "We shall watch and see which son behaves in the most gracious, generous, and kind manner. Then we will know which possesses the original ring."
And from that day on, each son lived as if he was the one with the magic ring, and no one could tell which was the most gracious, generous, and kind. Then the teacher, having told this story, said to the woman, "If you wish to know which religion is true, watch and see which reveals God’s love for the world." (1)
A teacher of the law once asked Jesus, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these."
The word for today is love. There is a line from the musical Les Miserables that goes like this: "To love another person is to see the face of God."
"Dear Ann Landers, I am a 46-year-old woman, divorced, with 3 grown children. After several months of chemotherapy following a mastectomy for breast cancer, I was starting to put my life back together when my doctor called with the results of my last checkup. They had found more cancer, and I was devastated.
"My relatives had not been supportive. I was the first person in the family to have cancer and they didn’t know how to behave toward me. They tried to be kind, but I had the feeling they were afraid it was contagious. They called on the phone to see how I was doing, but they kept their distance. That really hurt.
"Last Saturday I headed for the Laundromat. You see the same people there almost every week. We exchange greetings, and make small talk. So I pulled into the parking lot, determined not to look depressed, but my spirits were really low. "While taking my laundry out of the car, I looked up and saw a man, one of the regulars, leaving with his bundle. He smiled and said, `Good morning. How are you today?’ Suddenly I lost control of myself and blurted out, `This is the worst day of my life! I have more cancer!’ Then I began to cry.
"He put his arms around me and just let me sob. Then he said, `I understand. My wife has been through it, too.’ After a few minutes I felt better, stammered out my thanks, and proceeded on with my laundry.
"About 15 minutes later, here he came back with his wife. Without saying a word, she walked over and hugged me. Then she said, `I’ve been there, too. Feel free to talk to me. I know what you’re going through.’ Ann, I can’t tell you how much that meant to me. Here was this total stranger, taking her time to give me emotional support and courage to face the future at a time when I was ready to give up.
"Oh, I hope God gives me a chance to do for someone else what that wonderful woman and her husband did for me. Meanwhile, Ann, please let your readers know that even though there are a lot of hardhearted people in this world, there are some incredibly generous and loving ones, too." (2)
The word today is love. Dr. Kenneth Boa puts it like this: "The Bible is all about relationships. The greatest theologians of church history have agreed on this. Obviously, the first example would be Jesus. When he was asked to sum up the God-centered life, he said that it was quite simple. Love God; love others. Later, Augustine, the great theologian of the early church, observed that everything written in Scripture is meant to teach us how to love either God or our neighbor. More than a thousand years later, a converted Augustinian monk named Martin Luther echoed this same thought when he declared that the entire Christian life consists of relating to people around us--particularly by serving our neighbor. As Michael Wittmer says, ‘The one truth that everyone seems to agree on, from Moses through Jesus and on to Augustine and the Reformers, is that it’s virtually impossible to please God without loving our neighbors.’" (3)
The word is . . . love. You know it. I know it. We can’t truly follow Jesus unless we learn to love.
Someone spotted a church sign: "When God measures a person, He puts a tape measure around the heart. " And it’s true.
A psychologist in Atlanta says he meets two kinds of people. The unhealthy ones go through life crying, "Please love me, please love me." The other group consists of people healthy enough to give love, not just receive it. He says that the best cure for those who cry, "Please love me, please love me" is to help them attain a place of wholeness where they can give help and love to others. In giving love to others, they will automatically fill their own deep needs for attention and love. (4)
No person can be said to be a whole person who is not able to love as well as be loved. The word is love. When the Bible seeks to sum up God’s character, it simply says, "God is love." (1 John 4:8) Love is our primary responsibility as followers of Jesus Christ.
Now, whom are we to love? We begin, of course, with those closest to us, those for whom we are responsible.
Tom Tewell, the pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York, tells of a wedding he once conducted. Tewell was requested to perform this wedding, not in a church, but on a farm. The reason was because the bride’s mother had an advance case of Alzheimer’s. She was barely conscious. She never responded with words; all she could do was groan, which she did most of the time.
The couple wanted to be wed on the family farm so that the mother could attend her daughter’s wedding.
Tewell arrived to find a large front porch that had been beautifully decorated with ornate white chairs. The members of the bridal party were there. They were graduates of Harvard, Stanford, Duke and Dartmouth. They all had either MBAs or law degrees. They were bright, beautiful young people who had the misfortune of being aware of their elite status in life and showing it.
When Tewell checked on the bride about thirty minutes before the service, she asked if it would be all right if her father took her mother up to the first row? She assured him that if her mother’s groans grew too loud, they would take her out. Tewell said "Of course, that would be fine."
The hour arrived, the father carried in his frail little wife. He sat down on the front row, and held her in his arms like a child. The groomsmen walked in followed by the bridesmaids. They all looked arrogant and aloof.
When the bride and groom took their places, the minister repeated the traditional vows that all of us have heard. ‘I, Andrew, take you Melissa, to be my wedded wife; and I promise before God and these witnesses to be your loving and faithful husband; in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness, and in health, for as long as we both shall live.’
"And that’s when it happened," says Tom Tewell. "God’s Spirit penetrated those groomsmen, and they heard those words in all their fullness. You could see it wash over their faces. Suddenly they were not so assured of being bright, beautiful people whose future was based on money and power and prestige and all the things the world says will make your life complete. It was as if they realized for the first time that despite their young, brilliant lives, something someday might go wrong.
"Fifty years earlier, the father of the bride and his wife, now cradled in his arms, had spoken those same vows. And everyone in that wedding party was saying, ‘Look at them now. She can’t even respond.’ And the tears welled up in their eyes as they realized that life doesn’t always play out as you plan. You can run into problems you never dreamed of encountering.
"That husband, cradling his wife of fifty years, earned a Ph.D. in loving," says Tom Tewell. "He finished the race and kept his vows. He cared for his wife until the end." (5) The word is love. Can you love like that husband loved? Can I? God does, but can we? We begin with those closest to us.
But love, if it is Christ-like love, does not stop at home.
It’s somewhat easy to love the people at home. But how about the server in a restaurant? How about the clerk in the convenience store, especially the one who can barely speak English? How about the person talking on her cell phone who cuts you off on the freeway? How about the homeless man who approaches you for a handout? The test of Christian love is not how you treat the folks at home, although some of us can certainly improve in that area. But the test of Christ-like love is, how do you treat those who seem undeserving of your love?
Michael Brennan was a homeless man who spent most of his nights sleeping in a cemetery near Harvard University. Brennan had used drugs since he was 13 and eventually became addicted to heroin. In 1990 after a detoxification program, he went to Boston determined to carve out a new life for himself. His motto was, "Don’t do drugs and see what happens." He worked part-time moving furniture, but when he wasn’t working, like many homeless persons, he spent his time in the Boston public library where it was warm and hospitable. Unlike many of his kind, however, he began to take advantage of the library for more than a place to hang out. Knowing things had become the goal of his life, and knowing that he knows gave him a direction to pursue.
Since he was a child he had wanted to write. It was a passion with him. He found books about freelance journalism. "I didn’t even know where to put the address on a cover letter. I had to start with that," he said. Brennan learned all he could from how-to books in the library and then started to write.
One day he was in Cambridge wandering the campus of Harvard University. He came across a room full of computers and asked a student if could use one of them. The young man said, "sure," and lent him some software. It was this act of kindness, this treatment that gave him some dignity, which Brennan says was crucial to his recovery. Treating him with compassion instead of scorn, he was allowed to use the Harvard computers. His first major article for a local newspaper netted him $1,000 which put a roof over his head. Since that time he has had articles published in Newsweek and other major magazines and papers as well as a book. (6)
An unknown college student helped change this homeless man’s life. Wouldn’t you like to make a difference in someone’s life like that? The word is love, Christ-like love. Love like the love that sent Christ to die on a cross for worthless folks like you and me. Love like that of a husband holding his wife with Alzheimer’s at their daughter’s wedding. Do you have it? There’s only one place I know it can be found. It is by opening our hearts to the God whose name and whose nature is love. What are the two great commandments? Love God. Love your neighbor. Do those two things and you will not be far from the kingdom of God.
1. Daniel E. H. Bryant, First Christian
2. Contributed by Dr. John Bardsley.
3. http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=3390.
4. Philip Yancey, Where Is God When It Hurts? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990).
5. Thomas K. Tewell, "Running the Last Lap." Cited by Dr. Gregory Knox.
6. From a sermon by Dr. David Richardson