Tasting the Gruel of
Love
Dr. Larry Thorson
November 2, 2008
Matthew 22: 34-40
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the
Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law,
tested him with this question: 36 "Teacher, which is the greatest
commandment in the Law?"
37 Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the
first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'Love your
neighbor as yourself.' 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two
commandments."
Today’s New International Version Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society
In his book, Being the Body,
Chuck Colson, Richard Nixon’s former hatchet man turned prison evangelist tells
about the time he and a close friend, businessman and philanthropist Jack
Eckerd visited a women’s prison in
When they arrived at the mess hall,
however, with its long rows of wooden tables and its dirty floor, they noticed
that none of the inmates looked up. They had been trained to keep their eyes
down. It was a very controlled and intimidating atmosphere.
But
Jack Eckerd did something the Russian handlers hadn’t planned on. Colson
described Eckerd, who is now with Christ, as a tall, lanky, irrepressible lion
of a man who loved Christ and was not intimidated by anybody. Eckerd walked
over to where the cooks were ladling out the food. It was a grayish‑green
stew dumped over a scoop of rice. It smelled dreadful according to Colson.
Jack Eckerd, whose family owned the
Eckerd Drug chain and could afford any pleasure he desired, leaned down, smiled
broadly, and asked the server, “So! How’s the food in here?”
“Oh,
no,” Colson thought, “She’s going to offer us some. And we’re going to have to
eat it.” Colson’s doctor had told him to
avoid foods of unknown origins on that trip. And this prison gruel was
definitely unknown. The chunks sticking out of it looked like no animal Colson
was acquainted with.
Colson writes, “The next thing I knew,
my fears came true. The woman heaped a huge serving onto a plate for Jack . . .
and then smiled and ladled an even bigger portion for me. I did the only thing
any of us would have done in those circumstances,” says Colson. “I thanked her.
Then Jack and I walked over to one of the wooden tables and joined the inmates
there. (The government officials all stood back, stunned. None of them touched
the food.)” Eckerd and Colson bowed their heads and prayed. Colson said it was
the most fervent grace he had ever uttered in his life. He asked God to
sanctify that food and save him from every microbe lurking within it.
“The moment we started to eat,” Colson
goes on to report, “the atmosphere in that dreary prison dining hall was
transformed. Inmates got up from other tables and joined us. People laughed and
spoke with us. Some of the women showed us the crosses that they wore around
their necks. Even the ones who did not speak English knew that because we were
eating their food, breaking bread with them, we were one with them.”[1]
Chuck
Colson and Jack Eckerd gave the women in that prison a very special gift that
day. They identified with them. They entered their experience and connected
with them.
That’s tasting the gruel of love. Gruel is best remembered as the food of child
labor slaves in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist.
It was like a porridge for the very very poor. Eating that when you didn’t have to was truly
identifying with those who had to eat it.
That’s what a follower of Jesus does who’s
been filled with God’s Holy Spirit because Jesus is God and that’s what God
does. If you’re filled with God’s Spirit
you’re going to identify with the less fortunate and enter into their
experience. That’s what God does and if
he didn’t we ourselves would be left out in the cold.
But not every religious person believes that. In Matthew 22 a religious expert in the law,
tested Jesus with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in
the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love
your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two
commandments.”
On this weekend before one of the
biggest elections in recent history Jesus’ answer gets at what matters most in
life. Love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as
much as you love yourself. Nothing could be simpler than that. The problem we have is what Jesus meant by
love.
Love as displayed by Jesus cared enough
to leave the comforts of heaven and come into our world. Just as Chuck Colson
and Jack Eckerd in our earlier story cared enough to go into the dirt and
despair of a Russian prison and even eat the prison gruel, Christ cared enough
to come into the dirt and despair of our lives. That’s what love does.
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka tells about a
good friend of hers who died from Hodgkin’s disease. Kim left two young
children. At Kim’s wake, the six-year-old, Brian, was inconsolable. He sobbed
and sobbed, his whole body shaking with the force of his grief. Everyone there
wished there was something they could do, but how do you cheer up a little boy
who knows he has lost his mom? Everyone ached for him. His dad tried to calm
him down, but when he held him, Brian’s grief just rocked them both. His aunt
came over and tried to talk with him, but Brian was unreachable. His loss was
overwhelming. He was sobbing with hurt.
Quietly, two of his friends, two little
six-year-olds who had been in school with him since they had all been three,
walked over and stood on either side of Brian. No one told them to go to him,
and no one told them what to do. They just stood there with him, and one of
them put his hand on Brian’s shoulder. Brian looked up and saw them, and kept
crying. But they stayed there with him. They didn’t talk to him, they didn’t
try to cheer him up, says Rev. Zencka, they just stood by him, willing to stand
in his pain and be there for him. Slowly, his weeping tapered off, and before
long the boys were scampering around the funeral home, chasing each other and
giggling. Ever so often, Brian would come back to the front of the room and sit
by his mom’s casket, and cry, and the other boys would stand with him quietly
and wait with him.[2]
That’s what love does. If you’re asking
how you can show your love for God and your neighbor, find someone who is in
pain and go to them. Stand with them. Minister to them. God is probably not
asking you to go to
Many people today only want to help people who
they deem worthy of such help. “They made choices just like I did,” these
well-meaning people complain. “I’m not obligated to care for people who refuse
to care for themselves.” And, as the world sees it, that’s true. Fortunately
Christ didn’t see it that way. Paul wrote
in Romans 5:6-8, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still
powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a
righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But
God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.” Christ
gave himself for the undeserving.
Len Niehoff, tells about a man who reached out to
someone most of us would agree did not deserve his help. The man who reached
out was named Louis Saunders. “He was not a rock star or a political leader or
some other sort of celebrity,” says Niehoff. “He was just a Disciples of Christ
minister who lived quietly and served as a pastor in
“Saunders was serving at a church in
“When he got there, Saunders discovered that the
ministers had backed out; they objected to the open-air ceremony, fearing they
would be exposed to potential snipers. The small, forlorn, and impoverished
Oswald family asked Saunders to fill in, so he did. He’d left his Bible in his
car, but he knew some of it by heart; so from memory he recited the
twenty-third Psalm and a passage from the Gospel of John. And he said this:
‘Mrs. Oswald tells me that her son, Lee Harvey, was a good boy and that she
loved him. And today, Lord, we commit his spirit to your divine care.’”
Niehoff adds this commentary to this news story,
“I think it is fair to say that on that date in this country there was no more
hated person than Lee Harvey Oswald. No one had anything to say about him that
allowed any room for grace or redemption. No one, that is, except his mother,
Rev. Saunders and God.[3]
While God as Christ was tempted just as we are
tempted to live a mediocre life focused on his own pleasures and well-being he
knew that he had a mission and a purpose to love God and his neighbor with all
his heart, soul and mind. That’s what
God does. That’s what a Christ
following, Spirit filled church does.
That’s what I hope we will be.
Jesus cared enough to come into our world, to care
even for the undeserving. He was focused on that which really mattered, that
which was eternal. Rocks aren’t eternal. Even diamonds aren’t eternal. Only
people are eternal. That is why, when Christ was asked which commandment is
most important, he replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and
with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest
commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Taste the gruel of love. Identify with someone who can’t help
themselves. Give a ride to someone who
can’t drive. Take someone to lunch who
can’t afford to pay. Tutor a child whose
parents can’t read. Sit with someone
who’s alone. That’s what God did to
reach us on the cross. It’s our turn to
return the favor.
Sermon
taken from Dynamic Preaching Sermons Fourth Quarter 2008, King Duncan,
ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., 2008