Agape Love Without Barriers

How do we achieve the community that Jesus was establishing during his public ministry? The actions of those of us who believe in Jesus and seek to realize the words that he preached and taught must point to a standard that is reinforced through practice. Love is the standard that Jesus built all his relationships, preaching, teaching, and his efforts to create and maintain just systems upon to ensure that we all treat one another as God treats us.

Since love is the be-all and end-all for us as believers in Jesus' words of life, it is the essential practice we should desire to engage in every day in every part of our collective lives. I have heard about living out this standard of love all my life. And, I have both spoken and acted in ways that have made known that I have much more work to do before I can be satisfied that I am doing my part to be a good practitioner of God's love, compassion, and care for others.

I had a childhood neighbor who was noticeably larger than nearly all of the other children. He was taller, stronger, and heavier than the rest of us kids who were in his same age bracket. He knew he could take advantage of us, and he often did in physical ways like when he would hit us hard just to exhibit his dominance over us, intimidate us when we got into an argument with him, and humiliate and defeat us regularly in most every sport he played with us smaller and weaker kids.

As we all grew and went to high school, I eventually lost track of the neighborhood bully. Until I happened upon him at a pickup basketball game in the park, but I did not recognize him. When I finally got a chance to play, it was on the team that was opposite his and when I heard his voice I was surprised to see that I had grown taller, and heavier than he was.

After playing against him in several one-on-one matchups, I knew I had become much stronger than he was since the days of his ruthless reign over the neighborhood's kids. I then decided that when I got the ball and was able to advance towards the basket to score points, I would impose my greater size and strength by running over him, past him, jumping over him, and when I could, intentionally knocking him over as much as I could get away with every time I matched up against him.

I did the same things as a defender when he had the ball by muscling the ball out of his hands and preventing him from scoring humiliating him in the process. The once brash bully was not happy about being treated that way but was unable to do anything about it. After playing many pickup games that day on teams going against the bully, he stopped playing on the teams that opposed mine. I initially felt a sense of justice being served, but after a while, I felt bad about how I had treated him knowing how it felt when he once dominated me.

Maybe you have acted unlovingly or spoken harshly toward someone who had formerly treated you unfairly, and you realized that you were not being as loving, caring, and compassionate as God wanted you to be. The Bible reading for this Sunday begins with Jesus saying, "But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you."

Those words are hard to hear after being treated unfairly. Please read the entire passage and open your heart and mind to the full message of how to love others in the way that Jesus outlines in Luke 6:27-38. We often overlook this way because we may not agree with Jesus' opening statement about how to treat our enemies. Do we really want to be like Jesus after all?