When I was growing up
there was a phrase we used to say about people who criticize us. That phrase
was “haters gonna hate.” What the phrase
meant was that people who are looking for something the criticize are always
going to find it. It could be about the way you dress, you could show up to
school in the nicest Ralph Lauren Polo or in my case in high school in the
newest football jersey and Nike’s, and yet someone would criticize you for your
brand of jeans. “Haters gonna hate.” You
could be in the upper percentile of your graduating class, hold a steady job
six days a week on top of that, and yet still somebody would remark that you
should have been involved in more extra-curricular activities at school. “Haters
gonna hate.” And yet none of that compares to when you put on that dark shade
of blue down in Durham, North Carolina. It doesn’t matter that the school used
to be a Methodist school or that it still has a United Methodist Seminary. It
doesn’t matter that the school is ranked highly in academics and that their
student athletes are not only world class athletes but are also true scholars
(unlike that other school down the road from it). None of that matters for when
you put those four letters D-U-K-E across your chest, well haters gonna hate.
The phrase haters gonna hate certainly did not exist in
the time of Jesus, but if there was one phrase to summarize what Jesus was
talking about in this passage it would be that phrase. As Jesus talks to the
crowds in our passage for this morning, he points out all the ways in which the
people have rejected messengers of God.
He first mentions John the Baptist and his ministries. Earlier in the
chapter Jesus talked about John the Baptist was a prophet preparing the way for
the Messiah. But John was rejected. The people did not like the message of
repentance and preparation that John had to preach. John was too stern, to
strict, too rigid. People would talk and criticized John because he did not
drank and because of his long fasts. They thought that John was not one of
them, he was an outsider, his views were radical and they did not have to
listen to him.
John was rejected for
his stern strict lifestyle, and so here comes the Son of Man. He is one of us.
He drinks and eats with sinners and tax collecters. He touches the unclean. He
comes speaking words of love and peace. This cannot be the Messiah, the Messiah
will be a mighty warrior, the Messiah would not associate with sinners and tax
collecters, This man Jesus is not the Messiah, he is a glutton and a drunkard…
Haters gonna hate.
Just like the crowds that Jesus is speaking to, we also
too often look for the fault in someone rather than for what it holy. Someone can speak some truth to us, but
because it is not what we want to hear, because it is not what we expect to
hear, we find reasons to reject them. We
have found ourselves now hunkering down to our own sides, and viewing whoever
has a differing opinion as someone who is
misguided, evil, and detestable.
If you want to see this at work, we have to look no further than here in
our nation with our own political ideology. We are no longer able to talk
through issues that matter to us, we can no longer try to find compromises for
the good of the country. Our country has become polarized, conservatives and
liberals, and there is no room for anything in between. Politics has become more of a game of winning
on your position rather than working for the common good. All of this has most
of us to drawing our battle lines, and whoever is against what we believe, is
someone who is detested. Don’t believe
me, simply say the name Michelle Bachman to a liberal or Barack Obama to a
conservative, and see the reaction that you get. Where did we go wrong? When
did we stop listening for the good and the truth in people, and start looking
only for hate and anger?
Sadly, this hate, this vilification is not limited to our
political sphere, but it has snuck into even the church. Some of you may be aware that the United
Methodist Church is going through a lot of turmoil over the issue of human
sexuality. This same sort of vilification and hate has become deeply imbedded
in supporters of both sides of the argument. Things have become so serious that
there are pastors calling for a split in the United Methodist Church. This is
an issue that we as United Methodists do in fact need to wrestle with, but how
can we, if we simply reject the other
before truly listening to what they have to say? Are we too like the crowds who
rejected John the Baptist and Jesus? Are
we rejecting the prophets of now because they speak a word contrary to what we
want to hear?
At Annual Conference this year, Bishop Cho announced that
the Virginia Conference who be hosting conversations about human sexuality
throughout the year. I pray that this is
true. I pray that these will truly be conversations rather than debates. I pray
that as we discuss an issue that is near and dear to many of our hearts, we may still be able to view those with
differing opinions not as evil or as villains, but as people expressing their
love and belief in God in a different way. It doesn’t mean that our minds will
be changed, it doesn’t mean we have to give up what we believe, but it does
mean that we recognize why this is so important for our brothers and sisters
who disagree. It means that we can listen, truly listen to what they are saying
and believe that in what they say there might just be some truth from God being
spoken. John was rejected for being
other-worldly, for being strict and rigid, while at the same time Jesus was
rejected for eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners, for being too
much of this world. Yet we know that
both John and Jesus spoke the truth of God.
As Christians, as we discuss and have these controversial conversations
let us not look first to reject the other, but instead look to see where God
may be speaking through them. Sure, Haters gonna hate, but Christians are
called to love.
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