Since human speech developed poets, prophets, preachers,
and performers have been talking, singing, and proclaiming love. In the 1960’s:
“All you need is love, Love is all you need;” “I love him, I love him & where
he goes I’ll follow, I will follow him.”
Even the Bible: Micah: “do Justice, love mercy, walk
humbly with your God;” Jesus: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart,
mind, soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”
About 100 A.D. a teacher from the Johannine School wrote
his first letter which includes the following verses.
“Beloved,
let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of
God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
God's love
was revealed among us in this way. God sent his only Son into the world so that
we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he
loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Beloved,
since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever
seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in
us….
…. God is love, and those who abide in love
abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this:
that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we
in this world.
There is no fear in love, but perfect
love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached
perfection in love.
We love because
he first loved us. Thos who say, "‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or
sisters, are liars for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have
seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen
Th commandment
we have from him is this: those who love God must love
their brothers
and sisters also. (John 4:7-21)
SO, who are my brothers and sisters? Who is my
neighbor? The following story will help answer these questions.
In the late 1960’s, one of my Mentors, the Rev. Bob
Gilbert, a Methodist Circuit Rider in the mountains of East Tennessee, was invited
to preach at a Ku Klux Klan Rally. He accepted the invitation because he
believed God had called him to do this. His wife, Dot, on the other hand
thought he had lost his mind.
Bob met a group of people at the mountain church he
pastored and was blindfolded and carried by car to the dirt path that led to
the rally site. The blindfold was removed as the cross was lit and he was
introduced as the chaplain for the evening. Bob began to tell a modified
version of “the Good Samaritan Story.” In Bob’s version a Black Man was driving
from Knoxville to Chattanooga when his car slid off the road breaking the front
axle. A Baptist minister and a Methodist minister both passed by without
stopping, on their way to win souls for Jesus. Finally, Bob said, “a Klansman
on his way to this very rally stopped, bandaged the man and flagged down a tow
truck.
At this point all the Klansmen began booing and calling
Bob names. Bob shouted, “Quiet, how dare you interrupt the Word of God when it
is being preached!” He then completed his story, the Klansmen extinguished the
fire, blindfolded Bob, and left him in the forest by himself. Bob removed the
blindfold and slowly found his way to the paved road where a church member sitting
in a pickup truck offered him a ride back to the church and his car.
So, in the eyes of Jesus, who is my
neighbor? Or, as
Blues and Rock legend Bo Diddley wrote in his 1956 song of the same name, “WHO DO YOU
LOVE!!”
