By Donald M. Tuttle

Have you ever noticed that some things work better in concept than they do in reality?

Take dieting, for example. It is a great concept. It makes sense to eat less, feel better and live longer. But then we go to a Christian Women’s Fellowship luncheon, Eunice Dunn brings chocolate chip squares, and reality sets in. Dieting is great until we have to actually do it.

The same could be said for exercise, socialism, public transportation and, of course, tithing. In concept, they all sound pretty good. They sound as if they might be wise to do. And yet history has shown that they are harder to make work than we might imagine. They are great ideas until we have to implement them.

Jesus’ commandment to love one another might fall into the same category. Conceptually, it sounds great. Of course, we can love one another. But loving one another is easier as a concept than it is a reality. Just think about some of those in our congregation.

Ÿ There’s Rick. He’s a nice guy, but I remember someone saying, “Never trust a man with a beard. He’s trying to hide something other than his chin.”

Ÿ Or take our graduates. They look nice in their commencement wear, but you have read the stories. The papers tell us their slackers, that they aren’t motivated like previous generations. That could make them hard to love.

Ÿ There’s Gene. He’s leaving us today. Moving away to the Hill Country.

Ÿ There’s Doug. He’s a lawyer. Enough said.

Ÿ There’s Bobbi. She’s a woman, and we all know that it was Eve that caused Adam to fall. And, of course, she's a redhead. You’ve got to watch out for redheads.

Ÿ How about Vicente. Vicente isn’t like the WASPs who dominate this church. He’s from Cuba.

Ÿ And here I am—a preacher. You know about preachers, don’t you? Jesse Jackson, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker. “Frauds, all of them,” some say.

Ÿ And then there’s Gene. Did I mention that he’s leaving us?

Of course, I exaggerate a bit, but you get the point. We can find a reason not to love just about anyone. It might be their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, their political affiliation, their occupations, or anything else. It might be that he said something that hurt our feelings or she did something that she shouldn’t have done. That fact is that there are as many reasons not to love people as there are people. Love works as a concept, but the reality of loving others, particularly others who differ from us is hard.

But there is something deeper at work than simply finding it hard. To love one another, as Jesus commanded, goes against our very nature. We may be reluctant to admit it, but we are self-centered. All of us want to be the center of the universe. We all want to have the sun, the moon and the stars--not to mention other people--revolve around us. That is what Scripture means when it talks about Sin, with a capital “S.” And loving runs counter to self-centeredness.

Take Lisa and John for example. They were young marrieds. They loved each other. They enjoyed the intimacy that marriage entailed. They valued the stability it added to their lives. But only months into their life together, they discovered themselves at odds. John had always enjoyed going out with the guys. As a bachelor, he would go out one or two nights a week drinking and dancing. He had done so for years. But he no longer felt free to go and do as he had done, and he resented it. He found his love for Lisa constraining. It impinged on his self-centered desires.

Love is like that. To love people goes against our nature. It costs us. Sometimes the costs are emotional. We have to give up our grief or anger or prejudices, our desire to be free or in control. Sometimes the costs are physical. Loving a child with special needs or a parent beset by disease can be physically challenging, even exhausting. Too often the caregiver ends up needing care. Loving can also cost us our dreams. How many women have abandoned their careers, their vocational hopes, because they loved their family? How many men died in war because of their love of comrades or country?

To love is not “natural.” It doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t just naturally swell up in our hearts and ooze out our pores. Loving runs counter to our self-centeredness. And that makes it hard to really, truly love.

Yet Jesus tells us--no, he commands us--to love? How, if love runs counter to who we are, can we do that? How is it possible to “love one another” as Jesus commanded?

The key comes in the rest of what Jesus says. He doesn’t just say, “Love one another.” He says, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Bible scholar George Beasley-Murray says that those five words--“as I have loved you”--are not incidental. They are extremely important. They are important not just because they reveal the standard of love, the love Jesus expressed to others; and not just because they suggest our motive for loving, which is faithfulness to our Lord. No, they are important because they hint at the source of love, at what makes love possible. And that, Beasley-Murray says, is “the redemptive love [of Christ] that frees us from restrictive love of self.” In other words, because Jesus laid down his life for his friends--us--because Jesus died for our sins and rose again on the third day, because Jesus redeemed us from Sin, we are no longer slaves to self-centeredness. We no longer need to be the center of the world because we no longer need to protect ourselves for this life or the next. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are re-created as people capable of loving, people willing and able to pay the price of love.

That is not just a concept. It has been our reality.

As many of you have no doubt gathered, Jesus’ earliest followers fascinate me. They were a mixed bag of characters—fishermen and tax collectors, zealots and prostitutes. While they were all Jews, they were not a homogeneous crowd. You had, for example, Peter as their leader. He was often impetuous, quick tempered, even given to brooding. James and John, whether driven by their mother or their own desires, were known to jockey for position next to Jesus--a fact that angered the rest. Then there was John, the so-called Beloved Disciples. He was clearly Jesus’ favorite—a fact the others knew and in all likelihood resented. Of course, there was Mary and Martha. One preferred the contemplative life. She liked to think and pray. When Jesus came to her house she would listen to his every word. The other preferred the active life. Busy hands marked her days. When Jesus visited she was a whirlwind of activity, making sure that all was as it was supposed to be. To say that the sisters were different would be an understatement. They were opposites. They had their moments, moments in which they were more than a little estranged. When these people gathered around Jesus they brought all their baggage with them--their egos, their personalities, their quirks. They brought with them all of their unlovable self-centeredness.

Yet they not only learned to tolerate each other, they came to love one another. They came to a place where they could set aside their agendas for God’s agenda, their interests for the interests of others, even their possessions for the well-being of all. These men and women came to a point where they gave all that they were for Christ and each other.

What changed them? “The redemptive love of Christ [freed them] from restrictive love of self.” They understood that Jesus died to reconcile them to God. Through his life, death and resurrection, he set them free from sin, redeemed them from self-centeredness, made it possible for them to surrender their place at the center of the world and truly love, really love, one another--and all who came to join them.

Of course, it was hard. After all, sin runs deep. But they loved as Jesus loved them.

In one of his books, Tony Campolo tells of a church in Trenton, New Jersey. It was a staid old church, filled with middle and upper-middle class Anglos who drove from the suburbs each Sunday. In a weak moment, they agreed to host a community center, a place for the low-income African-American children of that neighborhood to come after school and during the summer to get away from the gangs and drugs that marked their streets. But kids are kids. They ran the halls. They made noise. They left messes here and there. Before long some of the leaders decided enough was enough. They called in the young man in charge of the program, told him they were tired of the problems caused by “those kids” and that they were going to ask the members to close the center. A week later, after worship, the congregation met. The proposal was made, a vote called, and in this congregation only the three leaders voted to close the center’s doors. The rest said no. Oh, they knew the problems. They knew the trouble the center entailed. They didn’t necessarily like what some of the kids did. But they knew how to love as Jesus loved. They knew that because of the redemptive love of Christ they were free from the self-centeredness that that made their building, their race, their culture idols. They knew that because they were loved by Jesus they could love the children Jesus loved.

When we look around the sanctuary we are likely to see people we find hard to love. God knows that when we leave here, when we go to work or walk our neighborhoods, we will see folks like that, folks who even share our faith. But we can love them--not because Jesus commanded us to, not because he taught us to, not because we, on our own strength, want to. We can love them because Jesus Christ loved us, redeemed us, and set us free from the self-centeredness that makes love impossible. We can love because our Lord showed us love is not just a concept, it is the way of God.