How to Love Sincerely

The Sunday morning message in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish.  July 30, 2023.  The Bible verses used are Romans 12:9-21.

            One of the things we’re all tempted to do is to read the Bible selectively.  What I mean is that we focus on the parts of the Bible we like.  The parts that make sense to us.  The parts we don’t have any trouble following, or at least we think we don’t.  We focus on those things.  The parts we don’t like, the parts that don’t make sense, the parts we don’t follow very well and don’t really want to–well, those we tend to just skip over.  We know they’re there, we acknowledge them, but–we just don’t think about them too much.  We go back to the parts of the Bible that feel safe.

            And that’s what I’m tempted to do with a passage like the one we read today.  Now don’t get me wrong here.  I agree with everything the Apostle Paul wrote here.  I agree that all these things he wrote are things we should do.  It’s just--how do we make ourselves do them?  

I mean, let’s start with the very first sentence.  “Love must be sincere.”  Okay, sure.  That makes sense.  I certainly would not expect the Bible to encourage insincere love.  We know we’re supposed to love everyone, and of course, our love should be sincere.

But--what about the people we don’t feel love for?  We may know we should love them but--we don’t.  How do we change that?  How do we make ourselves feel sincere love for someone whom we don’t currently feel love for?  How do we make ourselves feel something we don’t feel?

It’s a tough thing.  It’s something I’ve struggled with.  Maybe you have, too.  I feel guilty about it, sometimes, but feeling guilty doesn’t change anything.  It just adds guilt to what I’m already struggling with.  So, what do we do?

Well, as I was thinking about this, I was reminded of something I’ve been told before--sometimes you have to read the Bible differently from the way you read modern writing.  Remember, this is something that was written two thousand years ago or more.  Times have changed.  Writing styles have changed.  Thought patterns have changed.  

Now, in saying “read the Bible differently”, I am not saying that we should change the meaning of the Bible to suit our purposes.  The Bible is still the word of God, and it still contains timeless truths, just as it always has.  We’re not allowed to ignore parts of it, to read in other meanings, or to do anything that changes what the Bible says.  As I said, we’re tempted to do that, but we cannot do that and still believe the Bible is the word of God.

But here’s what I mean.  Suppose, instead of starting with “love must be sincere”, we end with that.  And suppose we look at the rest of the passage as helping us figure out how to feel sincere love for people.  Maybe that will help us actually put this passage into practice.

So let’s start with “Live in harmony with one another...If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”  

Okay, that sounds doable.  Basically, that’s “live and let live”, right?  And we can do that.  Don’t go around stirring up trouble.  If people disagree with us, that’s fine.  They have a right to their opinions, even if we think they’re wrong.  Try to find common ground with people.  Try to find ways to get along.  Maybe there are even things we can work together on.  And if someone says or does something to upset you, just let it go.  Live in peace and harmony.  That actually sounds pretty good.  So maybe that’s our first step right there.

Now notice, it says, to live in peace with everyone “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you.”  The Apostle Paul, in writing this, recognized that sometimes people will simply not allow us to live in peace with them, no matter how much we might want to.  And it tells us what to do in those situations.  “Do not repay anyone evil for evil...Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written, ‘It is mine to avenge, I will repay,’ says the Lord.”

If someone refuses to allow us to get along with them, we still don’t have to attack them.  We don’t even need to hold a grudge against them.  We can simply leave it in God’s hands.  We can trust God to take care of it.  We can let it go.  That sounds pretty good, too.  It seems like, so far, these are things that will help us live a lot better and a lot more peaceful lives.

Paul says, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”  That one’s a little tougher, but it seems doable, too.  Be faithful in prayer?  We can do that.  We know we should pray regularly.  And most of us, I think, would agree that it helps us when we do pray regularly.  Be joyful in hope?  That sometimes takes a little effort--it’s always easier to be a pessimist than to be an optimist--but if we truly have faith in God, and if we truly believe God is good, we should be able to have hope.  Be patient in affliction?  Well, that can be hard, no question about it.  But it also goes along with what we just talked about--letting things go, leaving things in God’s hands, and trusting God to take care of things.  So, while it may be a little harder, we can probably handle this one, too.

But the things we’ve talked about so far really are all just about attitude.  Our attitude is important, no question about it.  But some of these other things Paul says actually require us to do things.  Let’s look at some of those.

“Share with the Lord’s people who are in need.  Practice hospitality.”  At this point, I start to think, you know, maybe these things are not so hard after all.  Because most of us do share with people who are in need.  Most of us do practice hospitality.  Not as often or to the extent we should, probably.  It’s probably something we could all work on and get better at.  But at least we’re not starting from zero.  We just need to do more of what we’re already doing.  We just need to work on being more generous and trusting God more.  That’s not to say it’s an easy one--it can be hard to trust God that much--but we can work on it, and we can get better.

But then come the hard ones.  “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.”  Yeah, I don’t know about that one.  It was one thing when Paul said just not to do evil to our enemies, to let God take care of them.  It’s another thing when Paul says we need to actively do good things for our enemies.  We need to actually take care of them.  In short, we need to act in loving ways toward our enemies.  Do you want to do that?  Because, to be honest, I don’t.  

But listen to what Paul goes on to say.  “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on [your enemy’s] head.  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

If we act in loving ways toward our enemies, what will happen?  Well, let’s be honest.  Some of them will take advantage of us.  Some of them will remain our enemies and will treat us even worse.  Life is not one of those cute little children’s Sunday school stories I learned as a kid, where when the hero was nice to the bully the bully always reformed.  I wish life worked that way, but it does not.  At least much of the time it does not.

But it’s not a foregone conclusion that our enemies will take advantage of us.  At least sometimes--once in a while--our enemies might think, why is this person being nice to me?  Why is this person helping me?  Maybe, possibly, there’s a chance that, by doing this, we can reach them for Christ. 

And you know, that’s an awesome feeling, to reach someone for Christ.  For a Christian, it’s about the best feeling we can have.  I mean, it’s rare when anyone leads someone to Christ all by themselves, and obviously the Lord is always involved in that process.  But to feel that you’ve at least played a part in leading someone to Christ, to leading them to salvation and eternal life, that’s about the most awesome feeling there is.  And that just might be enough incentive for us to treat even our enemies, even people we don’t like very much, in loving ways.

And treating people that way just might be the key to what we started out talking about--loving everyone, and making that love sincere.  Maybe if we treat people in loving ways, we’ll actually start to feel love for them.

I’m reminded of a time when John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was having a crisis of faith.  He was preaching about faith in Christ, but he was not sure he felt it himself.  He asked a friend, Peter Bohler, what he should do.  Bohler replied, “Preach faith until you have it, and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.”

Maybe that sort of thing can work for us.  Maybe we can treat people in loving ways until we feel love, and then, because we feel love, we will treat them in loving ways.  Because, while we cannot always control our feelings, we can control our actions.  And our actions influence our feelings.  So if we act in loving ways, and treat people in loving ways, our actions just might make us actually feel the love we know we’re supposed to feel, and feel it sincerely.

It’s certainly worth a try.  Because we cannot just ignore the things the Bible tells us to do just because they can be hard.  That’s one of the ways Satan attacks us--by telling us that our faith should be easy, that we should never have to do hard things, that if we follow Christ all will be sweetness and light.  It’s not true.  Earthly life was certainly not all sweetness and light for Jesus.  It was not all sweetness and light for the Apostle Paul, either.

Jesus told us to do a lot of hard things.  But Jesus would never tell us to do anything we cannot do.  And he would never tell us to do anything that he, himself, was not willing to do.

Sincerely loving everyone, even our enemies, is hard.  But if we act in loving ways toward them, God’s Holy Spirit will enable us to feel that sincere love we’re told to feel.  And we will be the people God wants us to be.