Galatians 5:22-23

You are watching your favorite program on television when just at a tense moment there is a commercial.  You start to get up and head to the refrigerator, like Pavlov's dog, you feel you need a snack during the commercials.  But as you stand to leave, the image on the screen stops you.  It is a child, looking up at you with eyes like deep brown pools.  His arms are as thin as twigs, seemingly stuck on the balloon of the child's belly. Flies gather in clusters on his body, but the child seems too weak to brush them away.  This is a picture of what it is to be four years old and hungry and without hope.  After the picture has drawn you in, the narrator says that the money we spend on one meal is enough to feed this child for many days.  He concludes with an appeal to viewers to call an 800 number and make a contribution.

Maybe it was the picture, that beautiful and innocent child so cruelly battered by the random winds of poverty - it will be some time before you forget those eyes; the unmistakable eyes of a child and yet at the same time the eyes of an old man who has seen a lifetime of sorrow and disappointment;  or, maybe, it was because you were, at that moment, on the way to the refrigerator to get a snack, that you didn't need and only vaguely wanted; that moved you to forget the snack and pick up your cell phone and make the call.  As you give your credit card number over the phone, for an amount that is not large to you, but will feed the hungry child for months, you wonder why this particular commercial caught your attention and moved you to give.

The next time you see the commercial, it touches you again.  Those eyes! There is so much in those eyes! You wonder if your friend has seen the commercial.  So, you make a mental note to mention it to him the next time you see him.  Then you see the child again and 15 minutes later again.  The following week when you hear the, "We'll be right back after these words from our sponsors," right on cue you get up and head to get a snack and this time when the child's face appears on the screen you click mute and keep on heading to the refrigerator.

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As a young preacher in Whitesboro, Texas, in the late 1970’s, I experienced an odd story.  It is one of those things where I can’t really remember if I was there or only heard the story many times. It occurred at the North Union St. Church of Christ one Wednesday evening during church. An obviously, poor man came into our services.  He responded to the invitation song that we traditionally had at every meeting. He wanted to be baptized.  We were all excited about this man who had been so moved by God to come into our assembly and hear the Gospel and immediately respond to God's Word.  “That was why we always had an invitation, so that if anyone ever happened to be there who had never heard the Gospel before, they could respond.  So, we baptized the man and after services found out how needy the man really was and readily gave him lots of money to help him out.  It was a memorable night.
         
But after a week or so, we discovered, to our dismay, the man had been baptized in the Baptist church and the Methodist church and who knows how many other times he had been moved to obey the Gospel.  And each church, like us, had helped him financially after his miraculous conversion.  We thought to ourselves and told that story for years, maybe still and said, "Never again.  We won't get taken again."

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A woman wrote the following story.  She had been married forty years when her husband became afflicted with Alzheimer's.  It was difficult to see him struggle to remember the simplest things.  Eventually, it got to the point that he didn't remember even the simplest things.  As this horrible disease progressed, he got so bad that he did not always remember who she was.  She cared for him in her home for many years, but finally he got too much to handle and she had to have him committed to a nursing home.  Even then, she continued to spend most of her time, every day, there, caring for him and loving him.  She often felt that she would gladly trade places with him if she could.  He had been a good husband and she wanted to do whatever she could for him. 
         
Then, one day, as she was going through some of his papers, cleaning out his desk at home, she came across a box of letters.  They were letters to her husband from a number of women.  As she read them, it became clear that over the years, unknown to her, her husband had had affairs with all of them.  She wrote to confess that, since this revelation, the very sight of her husband repelled her and she wondered if she could be blamed if she never went to see him again.

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These three stories, the hungry child on TV, the baptized moocher, and the wife of an adulterous Alzheimer’s victim, all point in a similar direction.  They remind us that, often sympathy can come rather easily to us.  Much of the time we don't need to be coaxed into having compassion for those who are in need.  Compassion seems easy, almost effortless, as though it is an inescapable part of who we are.  But these three stories also say, when the emotional appeal of the television ad has been made too many times or we feel we have been taken advantage of or we feel betrayed, then we discover our compassion is really somewhat limited.  It no longer seems effortless. It sometimes seems beyond our ability to even care.

Many people assume that Christians are supposed to care more deeply and to feel more compassion than the rest of the world does.  And when Christians themselves realize, to their continual frustration, that their feelings of compassion have very real limits and that they are just as prone to be concerned about themselves as anyone, they feel they have failed. 

Can you relate to what I am saying?
          >A careless and stupid driver cuts you off at in the middle of in the midst of busy road construction and your compassion and feelings of love for all mankind, go straight throw the windshield of your car.
          >A call comes during supper and someone wants to sell you aluminum siding for your brick house.  You forget all about your warm feelings of concern that it is really a person on the other end of the phone.
          >A loved one says something selfish and shortsighted to you and all the feelings of love suddenly are gone and all you want to do is scream.

As Christians, then, we feel guilty because we know we are supposed to be full of love and joy and peace and patience and goodness and kindness and gentleness and faithfulness and self-control. We feel we have failed.  We feel like the Righteous Brothers, “You’ve lost that loving feeling. Oh, that lovin’ feeling. You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling. Now it’s gone, gone, gone, Whoa, whoa. Whoa!” That is the question I want us to consider this morning, “Why do I keep losing that lovin’ feeling?” 

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Let’s go to our letter to the Galatians and listen to what Paul has already said about love.

Galatians 5:6  For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

Galatians 5:13-15  You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.  The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

What does Paul say about losing that lovin’ feeling?  It doesn’t appear that Paul is too concerned your lovin’ feeling.  It seems Paul is more concerned with your lovin’ actions! 
          >What is the only thing that counts? It is faith expressing itself in love. Love is expressed.
          >Why are we are called to be free? For love. Freedom is to be involved in serving each other in love. 
          >The Law is doing to our neighbor what we would have him do to us.
          >Love is not biting and devouring.

It seems that Paul is remarkably not concerned with your “lovin’ feeling,” so much as he is in how we do love.  And that really is my point this morning.  The love we are to have for each other, for the lost, for our enemies, for all humans, is not so much a feeling, as it is an action.  If we were required to feel compassion, to feel some sort of huggy-feely love that would be asking something that is not within our control.  We simply cannot feel on demand.  Consequently, Paul tells us to act. 

We do not care for the hungry kids on TV, or help moochers or take care of unfaithful husbands because that person deserves it or because we feel like it.  Rather, our love works because of our faith; because we have faith in a God who sent us Christ Jesus.  When we love, as an action, it is not because “we’ve got that lovin’ feeling,” it is because God is love.  Our motivation to do good to people should not be based upon our feelings toward them, because our feelings are fickle.  They change from day to day or even moment to moment.  Our motivation to do good to people comes from God's love for them and His love for us.

So, as we begin our study into the fruit of the Spirit and we come to that first and over-arching one; love, let's not confuse it with a romantic sense of feeling, or a family sense of affection or an enjoyment we have for our friends or a fond feeling for others who are hurting . Rather, let's understand the love we have for all people is the love that God has for them and that translates into us acting on behalf of the God who loves them.  We act on behalf of God.  Love is acting on behalf of God.

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Now, with that definition of love, let’s place love back into the context of Galatians.  Remember the Fruit of Spirit is… the antidote to a fussing church.

How does love create and cherish the sanctifying community?

Our example of responding as God would has profound influence and transformative power on the body. 

We have amazing power over each other.  When I see you respond in love, as God would, then that creates in me a desire to do that as well.  Like a nuclear reaction when we have a critical mass of loving neutrons interacting with each other in love, instead of bickering, we generate this transformative sanctifying power!  Love begets love. 

Love becomes the antidote to hatred.
They are mutually exclusive.  When I respond on behalf of God; when I love as an act for God, that drives out the hatred in my heart.  It is amazingly difficult to do good to someone and continue to hold a grudge in your heart.  And on the other end, it is hard to be mad at someone who is kind toward me.

Love and hatred are both snowballs ready to escalate.  When we act with love, we have a chance to get that snowball rolling toward creating and cherishing the sanctifying community. When we respond with our Sarx tendencies or hatred, it pushes the snowball in the direction of biting and devouring.  So, bottom line, when you are feeling the biting and devouring emotions, you counter them with the actions of loving on behalf of God. 

Which leads to another question; how do I know what to do?  That is the right question.  Not, how do I know what to feel.  How do I know what to do?  And the answer is…

Rely, ask and follow the Spirit in love.
When the bickering emotions are there and we are struggling; we commit to relying upon the Spirit’s judgment not ours.  We ask the Spirit to suggest the appropriate loving action. And then we follow his leading.  If we can but stop to rely, ask and follow, we can generate that precious community.

Someone who worked at a shelter for homeless once said that he often gets frustrated with people he encounters there.  They can be difficult, surly, contrary, and ungrateful; in short they can act very much like people.  Frequently, he feels like lashing out, or just giving up.  He said that he has found only one way to transcend these natural human (Sarx) impulses.  When he encounters a particularly unloving person, he reminds himself, (here is the Asking the Spirit for a response) "Christ died for this person; this person, the one who makes my life difficult, the one I can't even stand to look at; this person, of all people, Christ died for." 

Perhaps this week we remember to say something like this to all those annoying people in our lives, as a way of rely, asking and following

It easy to be moved to compassion by the sight of a child that is suffering.  It is easy to feel loving towards a person that is gracious, and doing the best they can and who needs our help.  It is easy to help those who have been faithful to us.  But the test comes when we have been overloaded with images of suffering children; when we find we have been deceived and manipulated and betrayed; when we’ve lost that lovin’ feeling.  At that point, we don't rely on our compassion, because constant compassion is an impossible thing for human beings. Rather… we rely upon the Spirit to show us how we act on God’s behalf.

Los Alamos Church of Christ
September 13, 2009