Zechariah 12:8-10,13:1
Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 9:18-24
Occasionally, one finds a surprisingly wise person on television. One such person is Red Forman, a character on That 70s Show. His house is usually filled with high school kids doing typically foolish high school things, and he gets agitated at them and tries to set them straight before throwing them out of the house. He usually begins his wide sayings with a burst of profanity and ends them with ridicule of the person he is addressing, but rarely, the script writers give us a glimpse that the reason he says anything at all is because he really cares for all those kids, and deeply loves them. Of course, being a man of his era, he is not good at expressing his love in any way other than providing a house and food and punishment for bad behavior, but even so, he does his best in those areas. One of his wisest sayings was to a dope-smoking slacker (Hyde) who was being sullen at his own birthday party because he thought it was silly. Red knew that his wife and the other kids had put in a lot of work on the party, and seeing Hyde belittle their efforts made him angry. He took the guy aside and said to him: “(expletive deleted!) Being a man is all about doing things you don’t want to do.” He did not finish his speech, because what he really wanted to say was: “(expletive deleted!) Being a man is all about doing things you don’t want to do, because you love the people you are doing them for.”
Being a mature Christian as described by Paul in our second reading this morning from his letter to Galatia has a few things in common with the words of the prophet Red Forman. There is the obvious connection to doing things we don’t want to do because we love the people we are doing them for. We all know about that one – we do certain things when we are tired or would rather be doing something else because the task we are doing will make a better home or world for the people around us. Sometimes we are given the grace of a good attitude about it, sometimes we are not, but we do the tasks anyway, because our eternal love does not depend on our momentary attitude. Of course, the more often we do the actions, the more opportunity there is for the grace of a good attitude to be given to us by the Holy Spirit.
However, there is a less obvious connection between Red’s words to Hyde and Paul’s words to the Galatians. Being a man or a mature Christian sometimes involves doing things we don’t want to do simply because it takes so much effort to figure out what to do. We are no longer under law – we don’t have a convenient list of things to do and things to avoid. We are now in Christ, and Christ taught us that doing the right thing was a lot more complicated than just simply following a list of dos and don’ts. He also taught us that doing the right thing was a lot more satisfying for us and helpful for the world around us than just following a list of dos and don’ts. Basing our acts on faith is more work than basing them on law, because faith operates on love, and to love people we have to see them as Jesus sees them – as worthy enough to die for, as we heard in our gospel this morning. Basing our acts on love rather than law does not mean that we just do what we feel like. Love takes a long term approach to what is truly best for everyone, not just a short term solution so that everything is tidy and looks good for the neighbors. Living a life of love by faith does not include dismissing rules and regulations as irrelevant. Faith knows that rules and regulations exist to help us learn how to love, and so has the utmost respect for law, but faith also recognizes rules and regulations as only the beginning of love, not the fulfillment of love.
That is why mature faith takes a lot of work – we have to gratefully take the wisdom of laws learned from God and handed down to us by Godly, loving people in the past and use them as a basis for our own life of Godly love. We have to respectfully listen to Godly, loving people from other cultures, places, and points of view as they share their understanding of law and love so that we can learn from the Holy Spirit speaking through them, guiding us to mature decisions. We have to honestly search our own motives for everything we do, making sure they are based on a desire to serve God, rather than ourselves. Being a man is all about doing things we don’t want to do, because we love the people we are doing them for. Being a mature Christian is all about doing things we may or may not want to do, because we love our selves, our neighbors, and our God so much that we will do the work it takes to find out the right things to do. The more we do them, the more chance the Holy Spirit has of giving us the grace to want to do them, and the more we will learn to love doing them. But until then, we just have to be grown up and do them. So thank you, Red Forman, for loving those kids enough to get upset at them. May we work as hard at loving the people around us, but without the profanity. AMEN