Let your heart match your words

Following the greatest commandments

Not long ago, I was ordained as a deacon in my church. One of the duties of deacons here is to periodically deliver a short meditation during the communion portion of the service. Today is my first time delivering this meditation. This is what I plan to say.

I grew up about an hour from Athens, and for part of my young adulthood, I attended the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!) and worked in Athens while I commuted back and forth over an hour of country roads.

Image by ChatGPT

One of my memories of that drive is being behind an old car with a lot of environmentalist bumper stickers that said things like “the Earth is your mother” and “give a hoot, don’t pollute.”

What made this encounter memorable is that, as I drove behind this car, I was nearly hit by a steady stream of cup, bags, food wrappers, and other assorted garbage that was being tossed out both sides of the car.

If you know me, you know one of my pet peeves is people throwing garbage on the side of the road, especially my road, but what struck me at the time was that it was pretty funny that a car with all those environmentalist stickers was throwing such a high volume of garbage on the road.

They obviously didn’t believe what their stickers said.

About the same time, I heard a DC Talk song called “What If I Stumble.” The song started with this introduction:

The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today

Is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips

Then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.

That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.

How many of us are like the people in that car, not acting out the teachings that we claim to believe in?

This might not be a salvation matter for us. We know that all have sinned, and we know that we will go on sinning because we are human, but God’s grace and our repentance cover our sin.

But the flip side is that I’ve had people who I know tell me that they don’t want to be a Christian because they see so many Christians who obviously don’t believe what they say. Personally, I don’t want my actions to be the reason someone turns away from Christ. We need to remember that Paul wrote that we are Christ’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20), and ambassadors are typically on their best behavior because they want their actions to reflect well on their home country.

So that leads us to the question of how Christians should act. There are lots of Bible passages that give us guidance on how to act, as well as how not to act. I’m not going to try to hit all these because they said I need to keep this to about three or four minutes, and the pastor might get mad if I cut into his time. Besides, Christianity really is not a religion of rigid rules. It took me a few decades to realize that.

What I will do is direct you to one particular verse. It’s a verse that you find in three of the gospels (Matthew 22:34–40; Mark 12:28–34; Luke 10:25–28), but I’ll cite Matthew 22:36-40.

When Jesus was asked which commandment was the greatest, he answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

So straight from Jesus, if you aren’t being loving, you’re doing it wrong. A lot of the behavioral guidelines that we find in the Bible are really just ways to help us be more loving to others. In fact, Jesus said this when he said, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Sometimes that’s easier said than done. People can be annoying and hard to love, and it’s the ones who are difficult to love that we really need to try harder with.

There’s a meme that says following Jesus’s example might include flipping tables, but if we closely at what got Jesus angry, it was religious hypocrites and people who profited from worship at the temple. He sat down talked with the sinners and prostitutes and tax collectors and Romans. The dregs of society.

For us, the list of people we should love includes the people who bug you, the people who bully you, the people who cut you off in traffic and just don’t know how to drive, people who persecute you, your enemies (Matthew 5:44), atheists, trans people, other ethnic groups, foreigners (Leviticus 19:33-34), gays, immigrants (Deuteronomy 10:19), people of other religions, people of different political parties, and anyone else you can think of.

Love God and love people.

And if there is anyone here who is being pushed away from Christ because of the actions of some of his followers, I’d like to close with another observation from the internet:

“To be honest, if I was a Christian because of Christians, I’d likely be an atheist by now. But I’m a Christian because of Jesus, and Jesus is pretty freaking awesome.”

Prayer

Lord Jesus, we thank you for your love and mercy. We know that we all fall short of the ideal. Help us to be better ambassadors for you. Help us to live out what we believe.

We pray that you would give us guidance as we relate to others. Help us to see them as you see them. Help us to love them as you love them. Make us instruments of your love.

In Jesus name, Amen.

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