Love One Another
There comes a time in your life, in everyone’s life, when we have to decide, “is it them, or me?” Think about the epic stories you love to read, or the movies you love to watch. Somewhere in the film, maybe it’s a few times, the hero has to make that “them or me” choice. And there’s something about that moment when the hero chooses sacrifice; they choose the others over themselves. I am inspired by these moments. I want to be like that, I want to believe I would do the same thing in the same circumstances. But rather than a muscle flex emoji, I have a large question mark emoji dancing in my head when I consider what I would really do.
In God’s story, there came a moment for Jesus, our hero, just like this. All through his ministry Jesus knew what was coming, what he would suffer, that he would have to endure it all to redeem you and me. He never wavered in his willingness to go through with the beatings and the ridicule, the crucifixion and the separation from his Father. But he had one final moment to change his mind. In the garden of Gethsemane, on the night of his betrayal, he was praying and asked God if there was any way for this cup of suffering to pass from him (Luke 22:42). The understanding of what was coming was so heavy it pushed Jesus to the breaking point. But he didn’t demand a different plan or away out. Instead, he submitted himself to the Father’s will. And he did it for you and for me
It’s not likely that today you or I will face a situation where we have to choose “them or me.” Life and death decisions like that seem to happen a lot in the movies, but not a lot in everyday life. At least not the way we typically think. When the religious leaders asked Jesus what the most important commandment was, he said, “to love God with everything we have. And then, unsolicited, Jesus continued with the second most important command, which is like the first, to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22: 36-40). We love ourselves enough to make sure we go on living, to give ourselves what we need to thrive. So if we love ourselves like that, we must love our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, the same way. And I guess, in a more figurative sense, that is like dying.
However, I don’t think this passage is calling us to simply beat ourselves into a state of submission or humility. Instead, I look at it this way: When my children were little and we were enjoying a special treat or a snack, like all children do they would grab as much as they could for themselves. It’s survival of the fittest, which is why a lot of the youngest kids in the family are also the strongest or the sneakiest. They’ve had to fend off the wolves for survival their entire lives! But I would tell my children it was best to look in their neighbor’s bowl first. Not so they could compare what they had with their neighbor, but so they could make sure their neighbor had enough. And if their neighbor was in need, to give some from their own bowl. Because, as they sat in a circle, if they make sure the person on their left had enough, and that person looks to their left to make sure their neighbor had enough, it goes around the circle. When we look to fill our neighbor’s bowl first, ours gets filled also. Everyone has enough when we love others as ourselves.
