the encounter

While, thinking about the Gospel of Enough and the Gospel of Generosity lately… this writing from the second century always gets me:

It is the Christians, O Emperor, who have sought and found the truth, for they acknowledge God.
They do not keep for themselves the goods entrusted to them.
They do not covet what belongs to others.
They show love to their neighbors.
They do not do to another what they would not wish to have done to themselves.
They speak gently to those who oppress them, and in this way they make them friends.
It has become their passion to do good to their enemies.
They live in the awareness of their smallness.
Every one of them who has anything gives ungrudgingly to the one who has nothing.
If they see a traveling stranger, they bring him under their roof.
They rejoice over him as over a real brother, for they do not call one another brothers after the flesh, but they know they are brothers in the Spirit and in God.
If they hear that one of them is imprisoned or oppressed for the sake of Christ, they take care of his needs. If possible they set him free.
If anyone among them is poor or comes into want while they themselves have nothing to spare, they fast two or three days for him.
In this way they can supply any poor man with the food he needs.
This, O Emperor is the rule of life of the Christians, this is their manner of life.
– Asistides 137 AD

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Are you infected? Wanna be?

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When we talk about loving our neighbors, it’s always easy to love folks who like us and love us back. And yet on the flipside, it’s just as easy to make excuses as to why we don’t need to love those who have treated us wrong, or hurt us.

But imagine showing love to a group bent on bringing harm to you, your family and your friends — simply because of the color of your skin.

The civil rights movement in America can teach us a lot about loving our neighbor — and loving our enemies.

“The black freedom struggle is the best example of bringing together the quest for unarmed truth and unconditional love in the face of American Terrorism for 400 years. Instead of a Black al-Qaeda you get Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther.” – Dr Cornel West

Kevin Hendricks shares an even more personal look at how love defeated the KKK through one Rev. Wade Watts.

When Oklahoma State Sen. Gene Stipe and civil rights activist Wade Watts walked into a restaurant in the late 1950s, a waitress confronted them at the door and told Watts, an African American, that the restaurant did not serve Negroes.

With a smile, Watts replied, “I don’t eat Negroes. I just came to get some ham and eggs.”

And as Kevin writes, that’s tame compared to Watts’ reactions to Clary as detailed in this video:

May we all have the power to love in the face of adversity. May we all have the courage to face our enemies with a smile and love. May we give sacrificial love to everyone within our sphere of influence. And may our lives exhibit the love that has changed our lives — so that it may change the lives of others as well.

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I’m reading the new book “We Get to Carry Each Other – The Gospel According to U2″ (by Greg Garrett) right now and it talks a lot about community and how the band has always emphasized helping those around us and the privilege we have to actually GET to carry each other. Yet for some reason we seem to think its a burden to build community, to open up to others, to share and serve.

How different our outlook and lives could be if we saw serving and loving others is actually a privilege – a calling – a purpose in our lives…

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In recent years I’ve become more and more of a pacifist and a much stronger voice for non-violence. I know in many circles that’s often scoffed at. I’m OK with that, its not the most popular stance a person can take.

But then I read Eugene Cho’s blog post today about Fatima bint Mohamed bin Uthman Al-Mutairi.

Fatima was a 26-year-old Saudi woman who was killed by her own brother in August 2008 simply because she followed Jesus Christ.

Eugene shared Fatima’s story as a parallel to the life of Paul – who was vilified, imprisoned and hated because he was a “traitor to his people, the Jews.”

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