Bust-out Love

June 4, 2000

John 10:11-18

On a winter morning in 1994,

a man walked into a Planned Parenthood clinic

in Brookline, Massachusetts,

shot and killed a receptionist

and wounded three other people.

He then drove to a nearby clinic

and killed another receptionist

and injured two more people.

In the aftermath of the shootings,

Susan Podziba undertook one of her most sensitive facilitations:

secret conversations between pro-life and pro-choice activists.

"The emotion of the time is hard to describe now,"

says Podziba.

"I was frightened.
What if the wrong person found out

that I was facilitating those meetings?"

Both camps agreed to tone down the rhetoric.

"If abortion doctors are called 'murderers,'

then people on the fringes of society

feel there's justification for violence,"

Podziba explains.

"Neither side wanted that."

The participants

who met on and off for three years,

also established a hot line

modeled after the Cold-War-era connection

between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In at least one instance,

pro-life advocates used the hot line

to inform pro-choice activists

of a plausible threat,

thereby averting potential violence.

"The mediation process

was life-changing for all of us,"

says Podziba.

"The level of relationships

built among people who have been 'enemies'

was just mysterious."

The book of John

was written to a community

that was fractured,

split off...

actually, it was the remaining group

after the split had occurred.

Scholars tell us the split happened as

one group

moved to use faith

to support the life it wanted to live...

while the rest of the group

continued to submit to faith

and allowed it to be life determining.

Both sides claimed God.

John writes to offer a gospel

around which the remaining community could form.

Said the most important thing

is a spiritual life...

with Jesus at the center.

Read text. John 10:11-18

Excuse the mention of the N word.

But it is necessary.

Go online sometime

and visit the Web site: www.nigger.com.

You can try,

but you'll come up empty.

You'll get the same results for www.kike.com.

The NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League

are trying to preempt hate.

The NAACP owns the domain name for the first Web site;
the Anti-Defamation League for the second.

These non-Web sites

are just one way some are

trying to fight hate across the country -

a task,

says one civil rights leader,

that's like "chasing cockroaches."

Perhaps you've chased cockroaches yourself.

You heard them in the kitchen late at night.

You went to investigate,

flicked on the fluorescent light

and they scatter,

clicky, ticky, clicky, tick.

Bare-footed you scrambled,

tried to catch them,

crush them,

kill one.

You've invited them into your roach hotels,

but they refuse to check in.

They're clever and crafty.
They've survived for millions of years;

and not even a thermonuclear detonation

can destroy them.

We've got just about as good a chance

of eradicating hate

as we do catching cockroaches.

Jesus urges us to try, however.

Love will prevail -

ultimately -

over hate.

"In the ark of time,

good and right will prevail."

But hate is a here-and-now problem.

And resisting it is not for the faint of heart.

In fact, Jesus says that

the only way to put the hurt on hate

is with love.

Online,

one can find,

perhaps,

thousands of Web sites spewing hatred.

into our cities,

communities and neighborhoods.

Groups like

the NAACP,

the Anti-Defamation League,

the Southern Poverty Law Center

and others

are standing between the children

and community roaches,

between the sheep

and the wolves,

between us

and the bad guys.

They stand against folks like

the KKK,

the Aryan Nation,

and Christian Identity

and the twisted minds that have gripped wolves in sheep's clothing

like the foul-mouthed Rev. Fred Phelps.

After gay student Matthew Shepard

was beaten to death in October 1998,

a tall man in a white cowboy hat

descended upon the Wyoming funeral

waving fluorescent signs of Shepard's face

amid blood-red flames

and chanting the mantra

"Matt is in hell."

Few Christians would advocate the virulent phrases -

such as "God hates fags" -

that pour from Fred Phelps,

the infamous anti-homosexual protester and pastor.

But the rest of the country

often confuses Phelps's Day-Glo signs,

lifted high by a man wearing a giant nametag

that reads "Pastor, Westboro Baptist Church",

with mainstream Christian thought and politics.

Phelps' high-profile publicity stunts

act as fodder for homosexual-rights activists

to portray Christians as dangerous,

crazy, hateful and irrelevant.

Every news clip of Phelps

helps to blur the line between

disagreeing with a nonbiblical agenda
and advocating a fiery intolerance

for people Jesus died to save.

"Leaders like [Phelps]

pose a two-fold danger to the church,"

says Daniel Angus,

a representative for the media-monitoring group

Faith in Touch.

"They supply the Left

with an arsenal of detestable religious examples

to discredit credible people of faith,

and they present a false gospel

that plays upon legalistic Christians' fears

of moral compromise."

Phelps's outrageous antics

have attracted broad media attention,

casting him in the undeserved role

of spokesperson for conservative Christian viewpoints.

His angry sound bites

make him an easy antagonist

for reporters searching for a "balanced" story.

Today we, too --

as we model the Good Shepherd --

must

as part of our Christian call

be willing to stand in between

the hatemongers

and the powerless.

We must love and sacrifice,

protect the weak, the isolated,

the stranger and the alien.

I tell you this because

I want to get at two things John is saying about Jesus...

about the good shepherd.

First

Sheep know the shepherd...

well enough to know what he's not.

My friend Tex Sample

tells of his friend

going home to visit as an adult.

His father was not a man known for race relations.
Saw Jesse Jackson on TV, said,

"Somebody ought to shoot that SOB."

The son said to his father,

"Dad, why don't you go down to church

and pray to Jesus that someone will shoot Jesse Jackson."

Dad was so taken aback he was speechless for a moment,

then he said,

"That's not right."

And he didn't say anything about shooting Jesse,

or about hate for other races after that.

Second...

Sheep rely on the shepherd

for identity and safety.

It is a state of being.

I have a friend who is from Norway.

Asked this person what it was like

to get a gun in that country.

She said let me think about it

and I'll get back to you.

She e-mailed a family friend to talk it over.
She e-mailed me the response.

It is from a law professor

from the University of Oslo:

"Yes, it is much more difficult

to purchase shooting weapons of all kinds in Norway

than in the USA,

whether legal or illegal.

Besides, in Norway you cannot buy ammunition

without showing a weapons-card from the police

for a weapon that only uses the ammunition you need,

and the purchase will be registered.

In addition,

there are many strict rules regarding

where you store and lock away weapons

and what vital parts you remove from the weapon,

so if found,

you could not necessarily use the weapon.

In 1999,

38 people were killed in Norway

(there are 4.5 million people total).

17 were killed with a knife or blunt object.
10 victims were killed with a shooting weapon.
4 were killed with a revolver/pistol
and 4 with a rifle.

There are many more rifles in Norway

than hand weapons,

which says a good deal about

the kind of weapon that are the most dangerous

in killing situations.

It is undoubtedly the handweapons.

But the mentality behind the reason

for owning a firearm

is the most important to

how it is used and stored.

In Norway, the number of rifles

is very high per capita.

It is very common to have a weapon

for hunting

and also for shooting competitions.

To purchase a weapon for self protection

against fellow humans

has never had any legitimacy in our culture.

In USA, the mentality of

"protection" and

"revenge with weapon at hand",

decides the weapon's amount of "danger".

Since we in Norway

do not approve of this behavior and right,

it is more natural to have weapons locked away

outside the hunting season,

and there is also

no need for ammunition at hand at all times.

When it is legal to shoot an intruder,

one then has a weapon easily available,

often loaded,

in the nightstand,

closet and in the car,

and then often the situations can go wrong."

The reason I read you this letter

is to bring to our attention

the mindset that

we are entitled to protection and revenge

with weapon at hand....

at the expense of others...

not much different than buying an SUV thinking,

Well, at least I'll be safe in a crash...

yes, but auto-driver usually die...

which I think is an incorrect mindsets...

people who rely on guns for safety...

based on fear.

People who believe so strongly

in their right to visit violence as a form of power

that they say,

"You will get my gun

when you pry it from my cold, dead, fingers."

And so we will.

I have a hard time with this because

we're up against a Jesus who says,

"You have heard it says

an eye for an eye

and a tooth for a tooth.

But I say to you,

Do not resist an evildoer.

If anyone strikes you on the right cheek,

turn the other also..."

Matthew 5:38-39

A sociology professor

joined several extremist hate groups

to understand what these groups believed.

He said these groups have a common denominator.

It is fear.

Fear of change,

of people who are of a

different race or cultural group,

and general diversity of any significance.

Persons of low self-esteem

tend to take differences of opinion or beliefs personally.
They look to an authority figure,

who thinks like they do,

to tell them what to think, feel and do.

This means they are vulnerable to manipulation.

Our scripture today

deals with insecurities and uncertainties of life.

1 John says that

love casts out fear...

When we walk by faith

with a community of the faithful,

we know we are not alone

and God's love will guide and strengthen us.

there has always been significant diversity within the Body of Christ.

Will you love the Lord your God

with all your heart,

and mind,

and soul,

and strength?

We will.

Will you trust in the grace of Jesus Christ,

and promise to serve Him

with people of all ages, nations, and races?

We will.

Will you love your neighbor

as generously as you love yourself?

We will.

Will you live a life of grace and peace,

compassion and community?

We will.

The rural images used by Jesus -

such as "the good shepherd" (John 10:11) -

do not always translate into modern life.

Most people today

have never seen a shepherd,

except in photographs and Christmas pageants.

Most people today

have never seen

a really good-sized flock of sheep,

and if they have,

a fence was probably managing the sheep rather than a shepherd.

Certainly most people

have never seen a flock of sheep

in a state of panic

as wolves move among them,

seeking the choice lambs of the flock.

The violent, anti-Semitic Christian Identity movement

has a very, very, simple explanation of the world:

Satan!
Satan is at work.

His representatives,

the Jews,

are at work in this huge conspiracy

to do in all the rest of us.

So, I think there is a kind of neatness

to the [Christian] Identity package

that's appealing

and that fits in well

in the view of many people

who are concerned with the loss of certain individual freedoms,

as well as fears about the

loss of American sovereignty to international organizations

like the United Nations.

I think the reason Identity is growing is because

in the minds of many people,

the shoe fits. ...

"What we are seeing now

are the second and third generation

in many cases

of Identity families.

Some of the most scary people

are second generation Identity believers."