Question: Jesus, what's the most important thing?
Answer: Love God with all you've got, and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.
Do you ever stop and think about what that really means? That might just be the hardest instruction in the Bible: Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. It doesn't say be WILLING to love your neighbor as yourself. It doesn't say love your neighbor as yourself as long as its convenient and comfortable. It says love your neighbor every bit as much as you love yourself.
My old friend Johnny May used to tell the story about the preacher who stood up one day to pray before the sermon and he said "God we don't love you. we love ourselves." Truth is, we're pretty good at loving ourselves. It comes naturally to us. It's what we do best.
Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.
Oh, but wait, it gets worse. It's also written that we ought to consider other people as MORE IMPORTANT than we consider ourselves. Yeah, it would actually be pretty convenient to be able to just ignore those words.
What are some implications of what it might mean to take Jesus seriously? (which hopefully we would all agree is a good idea).
Here's one to get us thinking.
1. I know what I want Sunday morning to look like, sound like, feel like. I know what I want. But it's not really about me is it? It's about my neighbor. The one I'm supposed to consider more important than myself. The one who ISN'T there on a normal Sunday morning. It's about that person, not me.
What else can you think of?
How does this affect the way we think about our MISSION? (or our VISION?)
Why did God create the church? For us? Or for our neighbor? What does that mean?
What would it look like if our church (by which I mean the people) threw themselves into living out the greatest commandment of Jesus?
Anybody want to try it?
I absolutely want to try it.
ReplyDeleteI'm always trying to maximize my own pleasure and minimize my own pain, so how can I do that for others?
One thing I'm working on is listening to others and giving them the save attention that I would want to have.
Trying to think outside yourself is a good exercise to do any time.
Yes, I really do think this is critically important. I look around at all the new faces each week at The Launch and it strikes me how important it is for us to be in tune with our visitors, especially those who don't know Christ very well or not at all. If this means tailoring the worship service and campus operations around the needs of the visitor, then let's do it!
ReplyDeleteI wonder how we could be more intentional about identifying, greeting, and serving our visitors each week? I'd certainly be interested in working on a team that addressed this.