Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser
Dear Hate -
Love is Gonna Conquer All
April 21, 2019 EASTER C
On Maundy Thursday evening, I ended my meditation with a
reference to this country song Dear Hate, sung by Vince Gill and Maren
Morris. Its a good song for Holy Week -
Maundy Thursday and Good Friday - and the promise of Easter. For this Easter day, it connects the hate and
fear that led to Jesus’ execution, to the love in Jesus’ actions, fulfilled in
God unexpectedly raising him to new life.
In our current world climate of hate, division, terrorism and polemic,
we might wonder about where love is, where the resurrection power is. The song
captures some of this in its words ---
Dear hate - I saw you on the news
today Like a shock that takes my breath away.
You fall like rain, cover us in drops of pain - I’m afraid that we might
drown….You could poison any mind - just look at meine... Don’t know how this world keeps spinning
round and round…. But even on our
darkest nights, the world keeps spinning round. ... I hate to tell you- love’s
gonna conquer all.
The last chorus is addressed to Dear Love,which we
experience as mixed in - not absent -
Dear love - You were there in the garden when I ran from
your voice. I hear you every morning
through the chaos and the noise. You
still whisper down through history and echo through these halls, And tell me
love’s gonna conquer all, gonna conquer all.
My friends, Easter is the celebration that God’s Love
Conquers All. Love conquers hate, love
conquers fear, love conquers injustices, love conquers all. Hate could not kill God’s love for us and for
the world. Hate cannot kill God’s
Life. According to the apostle Paul, in
Jesus’ death and resurrection, death is swallowed up in victory. Jesus, who never uttered a word to counter
the violence and hate thrown at him, who was executed by both religious and
civil leadership for speaking God’s loving word to people, bore that hate to
the death --- and God raised him up again, a new creation, for eternal
time.
Hate is a terrible thing --- anti-life, anti-compassion,
anti-justice, anti-good of people. Hate
denies the right to exist to that which is hated; hate denies flourishing for
any people or idea which is hated; hate seeks to destroy, and not to lift up, or
to renew life, or to welcome all things and people in God’s name.
God’s love and compassion, however, are more than adequate
and powerful to overcome the hate in the world.
Jesus’ resurrection proves it; God’s triumph denies the power of hate and
brings new life into being, recreating a new kind of resurrected Life. Love conquers all..
Let’s look a little closer on just what Jesus did, what we
celebrate at this Easter day. Jesus
did NOT react or respond to hate as we
humans do.
Our human response to being hated is, unfortunately, to hate
back. If we are vilified, how quickly we begin to vilify back. If we are scorned, how easy it is to send
scorn back. If someone does us violence,
this urge to do violence back to them grows in our very veins. If hate threatens or denies my very existence
and worth, then it feels like the right defense is that old, “eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth,” kind of thing. I’ll do unto them what they did unto me. Their use of violence justifies my use of
violence back. Getting angry back is easy, and feels natural. Someone tries to
put you down because of your weight - or skin color - or religion - or your
favored political leader - make them of no account by vilifying them back. Someone in church says God is rejecting you
because of your theology, talk louder about God putting THEM down because of
all these other theological errors THEY are making. Quote verses to prove your point, even out of
context, and you sound more holy and more on God’s side. Someone cuts you off in traffic, tell them
they’re a jerk with a hand gesture. Or,
like I saw once in Chicago, turn your car around and chase them down the
street. Someone leaves their bright
lights on too long or forgets to turn them off, shine your brights back at them
or try and scare them. Your former
spouse tries to hide money from you to not have to do their fair share, sic
your lawyer on them and try to distract them with a diversion. Do unto others BEFORE they do unto you. He
who yells the loudest wins.
Friends, that’s is not what Jesus did - Jesus did not return
hate for hate. Nothing that’s recorded
of Jesus’ actions and words on those last days shows scorn, hate, anger or
violence. Instead, Jesus heals a soldier
who came to take him and got his ear cut off by a disciple. Put the sword away, Jesus says, and goes with
the soldiers. He only speaks to Pontius
Pilate with words about the truth of why he came. He asks God to forgive those executing him,
and commends his mother to the care of his disciple John. He responds to the thief next to him that he
will be in paradise that very day.
Hate is not the way of Jesus, even hate of those accusing,
persecuting and executing him,. Rather,
the way of Jesus is compassion - Jesus knows and understands what terrors and
fears and hatreds can make people do. He
takes what is done to him without retaliation, and gives back understanding and
compassion. That is how love swallows up
hate. That is how love conquers
all.
Friends, this is the gospel of Easter, and the victory of
Easter. If we are followers of Jesus the Christ, this is our model for living. Hate doesn’t drive out hate, Martin Luther
King Jr said - only love drives out hate.
Only deep, sacrificial, compassion can conquer hate.
This model of compassion, sometimes called the path of
non-violence, or the path of peace, takes a strong spirituality, and a sure
trust in God. Its not easy to come to
this kind of sacrificial love.
We know how to defeat hate,
In a simple example, remember how we teach our children. When my
children were young, they’d get mad at me for something like, oh, saying “Remember
to tie your shoes!” or something mild like that, but they would feel like it
threatened their autonomy. I distinctly
remember each one of them saying, at one point, “I hate you!” But because I loved them like crazy and
understood about kids’ immaturity and how to deal with their strong feelings, I
was able to say, “I hear how mad you are right now,” and not haul off and slap
them or yell at them, or something reactive.
I knew they were speaking out of their young years, their frustration,
they were overwhelmed by their emotions, which were not mature at all yet. So I could respond in my compassion and
understanding, and not just react in verbal or physical violence myself.
Yet even with our own children, that takes a certain
maturity from us as parents - as we can see when some parents DO react to
children like they, the parents, were the same age, and hit out. Maturity realizes its not really about me,
but about their immaturity. Part of my
parental job is to model how to deal with feelings, and to teach about
appropriate behaviors.
But its often a way more difficult thing to do with other
people, whose words may pierce us, and deeply wound us. Staying in that space of understanding and
compassion is really, really hard - and often we can’t. What Jesus did while he was attacked on so
many levels, was overwhelmingly difficult.
We might remember that when he prayed in the garden just before it all
happened, he sweat blood.
We have a high calling, this call to follow Jesus, this call
to help people be reconciled with God, this call to show ourselves as
Christ-followers by the way we love. Yet this is what we are called to do as we
learn from Jesus, and its how we show we are his followers. Sometimes we do a
better job than other times. Sometimes
our differences are difficult to deal with, and our intentions to be
understanding and compassionate kind of collapse. Unfortunately, sometimes we even forget that we
want to be understanding and compassionate, and fall into the way of worldly
fights. Sometimes even though we manage
to curb our tongues, the anger and hate in our hearts is still there. Our hearts are not yet fully transformed into
the image of Christ.
I hope that by pondering how our fears, angers and hates can
hook us into ugly behaviors, we can more deeply appreciate just what Jesus did,
and how hate was therefore defeated, conquered and made nothing. Love casts out
hate. That Jesus stayed true to his call, that he stayed in trust with God, and
that he could stay in compassions and love even in the most severe testing, is
why God could raise him up in a new, resurrected life, the first of a new kind
of person. And this is the life Jesus
calls us to share in, learn to walk in, to follow him, and be transformed into
this new model for humanity.
In one way, the call to respond to God’s love is easy -
God’s love affirms us, welcomes us, forgives us, restores us, tells us we are
worthy, tells us we can be made new. We bask in it, we are drawn to it, we are
grateful for it. However, in another
way, this call to follow Jesus in love is a high ideal, and takes all our life
to work out. Following Jesus leads to our own secret and dark places we’d
rather not see. Following Jesus leads us
to our own death to the old ways of living in order to be born into Jesus’ new
ways. In this way we die to our small s
- self, and find our new capital S - Self in Christ.
We say it at baptisms, when we say we die with Christ, and
are raised in CHRIST to new life. We turn from evil and hatred and all the
things that kill the spirit, and are made alive again to be transformed into
the image of Christ. We acknowledge the
trust of this even though we have no idea how difficult it will be to
fulfill. In a sense, we are in that
process as long as we live, and we say at our services of Witness to the
Resurrection (funerals) that our baptism is now complete in death, because we
are with God.
Friends, this Easter, let us strengthen our desire to follow
our risen Christ, and learn from him the ways of love that can conquer hate,
the ways of compassion that can conquer our fears and angers. Our country and our world needs Christ followers
who strive to respond to hate with compassion and understanding, people who
sacrificially know the power of love to bring new life, resurrection life. Walking in the steps of the One raised to new
life, may we seek to have our lives be transformed, may we determine in our
hearts to do the difficult work of learning non-violence and understanding and
compassion, and living it in the world.
AMEN.
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