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Love One Another

2021. 5. 9. 11 a.m.: Yonsei University Church Pastor Bae, Hyun-ju

“Love One Another”

Today is the sixth Sunday of Easter. The scripture given to us today according to the church lectionary shows the power of the Holy Spirit that the early church community experienced vividly in reality. And they testify to the most important commandment of Christianity, the commandment of love.

I The Early Church and the Power of Love

Pentecost is also called the church's birthday. After the Lord's resurrection and ascension, all the disciples who had gathered in one place and prayed with one heart were filled with the Holy Spirit. The early church was taught by the apostles, made friends with each other, and worked hard to pray. They had table fellowship with pure hearts and joy and praised God. Church members filled with the Holy Spirit have the power to care for and love each other. The power of love made them spontaneously let go of their obsession with material things. If they had brothers and sisters in need, they sold property and possessions and gave them out as needed. The Holy Spirit exerted the power of revolutionary love, breaking down the barriers between those who have and those who do not (Acts 2, 4).

Today's scripture, Acts 10, tells us that the Holy Spirit has broken another barrier now. The barriers between Jews and Gentiles were broken. This is an event that is not easily accepted by Jews like Peter. Looking at the beginning of Acts 10, Peter stubbornly resists that he cannot eat deceitful and unclean food in his dreams. It was a natural reaction as a Jew who keeps the law. Peter was bewildered by his dream. But when he awoke from his dream, he was invited by the centurion of the Roman army, that is, Cornelius, a Gentile, and went to Caesarea to preach to his relatives. Hearing Peter's preaching testifying of Jesus Christ, Gentiles received the Holy Spirit like the Jews, spoke in tongues, and praised God. Realizing that God was creating God's people anew in Jesus Christ, Peter laid down his stereotype and baptized the Gentiles.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Christ. By His incarnation, Jesus Christ broke down the barrier between heaven and earth (Phil. 2:6-7). During his public life, Jesus broke down the wall between the righteous and the sinner and became a “friend between tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34). The early church, filled with the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Jesus Christ, continued to adapt this principle of love that Jesus showed between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free men, and between men and women. Paul testifies of this revolutionary miracle of love: “ for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:27-28).

The world opposes each other by making race, class, and gender differences into discrimination. They fail to resolve conflicts, so they go through a vicious cycle of violence and war. Despite the differences and diversity, the early church was able to unite with love in Jesus Christ. Peter the Jew, Cornelius the Gentile, Philemon the free man, Onesimus the servant, Paul the man, and the Phoebe the woman shared the same love of saints in Jesus Christ. The early church was an alternative society where you can taste the power of love in real life.

II The Early Church and the Service of Love

The members of the early church personally practiced the commandment of the Lord that appeared in the texts of 1 John and the Gospel of John today, "Like I loved you, so you also love one another." Privileges were stronger than love in the world, but love was stronger than privileges in the church. The Jews voluntarily laid down the sense of the chosen people. The rich men voluntarily let go of his sense of ownership. Free men and men laid down their vested interests. Gentiles, the poor, slaves, and women became equal members of the community, leading to a rich fellowship. They saw the image of Christ in each other. Like this, the Early Church was a community that served with love “from us” first.

However, the early church was not a closed community that only loved “by ourselves”. Especially when the plague struck across the Roman Empire, the church practiced a dedicated loving service inside and outside the church. It looked very different from the pagans. Roman empire pagans expelled the sick, dumped them on the streets before they died, and devoted themselves to their own survival, indifferent to their neighbors. The Father Tertullian says: “Our appearance of caring for the weak and showing love and kindness is our brand in the eyes of many of our opponents. 'Look once,' they say. 'Look how much they love each other!'

In the era of the plague of the Roman Empire, Christians confronted the virus of love. With the power of revolutionary love, they resisted the egoism and cruelty that permeated the culture of the Roman Empire. This eventually led to a cessation of inhuman and cruel practices such as infanticide and gladiator games in Rome. Pastor Martin Luther King made a famous saying that today's church was like a “thermometer” that passively reflected the temperature of the world, but the early church was like a “thermostat” that actively changed the temperature of the world. The saints who kept the Lord's commandment to love one another were like a fire of love against the devastating wildfires of the Roman Empire.

III Skill of Love

Christianity is a movement of holy love against the forces of evil that are ruining the world. This movement of holy love must continue not only in the Roman Empire, but also today. Unlike early Christianity, which was striving to gather at the catacombs despite persecution, now face-to-face meetings are limited because of the virus. However, despite unprecedented difficulties, the church gathers hearts and wisdom to discern the will of God, and strives to fulfill its mission and duty as a community of worship, prayer, and love in various ways. These days, hate crimes often occur both domestically and internationally, and at times like this, the world needs more vaccines called love.

Erich Fromm made the famous argument that love requires knowledge and effort, like skill or art. We believers should consider themselves as players in the holy Agape Love Movement, and should pay attention to personally honing their love skills. Because love is the leaven and mustard seeds that change oneself and change the world. There are paths of pilgrimage that believers must keep walking in order to further hone their love skills.

1 Path to Forgiveness

First of all, we must walk the path of forgiveness. Peter asked Jesus a question. “Lord, if a believer sins against me, how many times should I forgive him? Should I do it seven times?” Peter's question reveals the perplexity of how difficult humanly forgiveness is. Forgiveness has never been difficult, and he seems to think that forgiving up to seven times is almost beyond human limits. But Jesus replied, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." (Matthew 18:21-22) To do seven times up to seventy times does not mean to count 490 times. It means infinite forgiveness, which means to have the character of forgiveness in the end, it means to have the capacity to forgive. Through the Lord's Prayer, Jesus said, “please forgive us our sins just as we forgive those who sin against us.

The man who was leading the religious group from the mountain took the wrong way. Angry religious men asked the elder. “Master, my brother got on the wrong road. What should I do? Shall we not die while wandering?” The elder replied. “If we say something to that brother, he will suffer, so let's do this. I'm exhausted and can't walk anymore, so I'll say I want to lie down here until morning.” All of the other religious followed.

We are accustomed to the habit of mind seeking achievements and achievements that require us to quickly reach the finish line. We lose once in a sporting event, and we change managers straight away. There is also a saying that it is a society where resurrection of the losers is difficult. As such, the gentle, humble religious in this story feels unfamiliar. Not only did the elder already forgive the guide who made the wrong way, he was even considerate not to inflict feelings of guilt and hurt on the heart of the wrongdoer. All of the disciples also joined. The power of forgiveness does not seem to be a fluke that occurs overnight. It seems that the fruit of forgiveness can be opened in the tree of humble and meek people.

2 Path to Self-love

Second, as you hone your love skills, you must walk the path of self-love. Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37-39). To love your neighbor as yourself, you need to know yourself and learn to truly love yourself.

“We are children of God, but we do not know it” (Meister Eckhart). In a world where it is natural to respond with “eye for eye, tooth for tooth”, repaying evil with good and forgiving seventy times seven times is a different life. In order to live a life of a different dimension, we must realize that we are children of God created in the image of God. God's children live on the frequency of their special relationship with God. God wants to establish an order that is qualitatively different from the world through his own children. Because of this responsibility and mission, the children of God must first extract the poison of all kinds of greed, attachment, and hatred from the garden of their soul and heart, and plant a tree in which the beautiful fruits of the Holy Spirit are opened.

God's children die to the world and live toward God. That is why they are able to become free people. There is a prayer from Mother Teresa that says, "Make me free!" “let us put this prayer into life: Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth; Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust; Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace; Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.” The Lord has shown the way to live as a free man, free from slavery, which is held by all desires and fears. The apostle Paul exhorts: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1). As a child and free man of God, walking the path of self-love is an important skill of love.

3 Path to Prayer

Above all, the love of Agape that the Lord taught us is the fruit of prayer. Jesus was a “person of prayer.” He regularly withdrew from his daily routine and used to pray for a long time alone. He went to a secluded place to pray at dawn. He alone climbed the mountain and prayed all night long (Mark 1:35; 6:46; Luke 6:12; cf. 3:21; 5:16; 9:18, 28-29; 11; 1). This kind of prayer is a long and deep prayer to meet the living God. It is not just a simple prayer with lips, language, or head, but a deep, sincere prayer from the heart and a powerful prayer that changes our existence.

You cannot love without prayer. We live in a world where we treat our neighbors as an object of competition and an object that we use for our own benefit. The flame of love can only be easily extinguished without the effort of constant awakening and prayer. When I am filled with endless greed and wounds, there is no place for love. Prayer is an opportunity to go to the presence of the living God, put it all down and heal our wounds. Prayer is also to make the icebergs of despair, weakness, pride and hate in us melt in the sun of the Lord. This is the corona period, when face-to-face fellowship is limited, and I hope that we will use this period as a time of closet to prepare a deep and abundant prayer time.

IV Conflict Republic and School of Love

Our country is also called 'a country that has accomplished miracles, a country that has lost joy.' It is also a conflict republic that suffers from various kinds of conflict. We need talented people with various competencies in our homes, workplaces, churches, and society, but I think those who hone the skills of love are the core talents needed in all communities where people live together. It is a phrase from poet No-Hae Park's poem 'Again'. “A very good person/he is already a good world/.......again/only people are hope.” A person with a personal skill of love is a very good person who gives hope to dream of a good world.

The church is also a school of love that produces these people. Early Christian elders of faith changed the Roman Empire by faithfully keeping the commandment to love one another. In order for this history to flow through the 21st century, we believers, alone and together, will not neglect to love each other as they walk the path of forgiveness, the path of self-love, and the path of prayer.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can drive out darkness. Hatred cannot drive hate away. Only love can drive hate away” (Martin Luther King). Let us pray in silence together.