JOHN UPTON from the

President

While attending the All Africa Baptist Fellowship (AABF)

General Council meeting in mid-February in Nairobi, Kenya, it was announced that 21 Coptic Christians had been beheaded by the terrorist group ISIL. That announcement came after a day of hearing the atrocities committed by Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, and the Muslim Brotherhood, to Christians and churches across eastern and northern Africa. One Kenyan pastor shared that the week before the meeting his Elder Board chair was walking to church when a hooded man rode up beside him on a motorcycle and shot him. A pastor from the Sudan shared his escape story. He was due to be executed but escaped the day before the execution. The Nigerians shared many stories of churches burned, shops looted, farms raided, and fellow Baptists scattered, killed, or kidnapped. The church at which I spoke on Sunday was checking cars for bombs as they entered the church parking lot and each person entering the church had to pass through a security check. Much of the conversation at the AABF General Council meeting

centered on appropriate Christian responses to all this hostility. The anger on the part of some was certainly understandable. Their expression of anger was appropriate and healthy. You can’t suffer such atrocities and not be angry. You can’t live with daily, random threats and not be angry. These brothers and sisters are staring into the face of evil itself and all its horrors. Some in the meeting were expressing deep grief. You can’t lose

people you love to such atrocities and not be affected emotionally. Some in the room were protective. In the face of such random violence how do you protect those you love? How do you guard yourself from such violence? Now, place beside all this the Matthew 5:43-44 command,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’ but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” The spirit of this verse was the heart of the discussion in Kenya. What does this verse mean and how do you do this? This is when I am very happy to report that Jesus was not a

romantic. There is nothing wrong with being a romantic but I am so happy that Jesus was concrete about love. He was not in love with love. He knew that love is not an idea. Love is not vague or abstract, that is a contradiction in terms. Love is applied in detail or it is not love. It is concrete. Love in Christ is not an option. It is necessity, non-negotiable, required. History has proven Jesus right on a large scale. In a world where insane hatred and violence spiral, where greed keeps so many in poverty, where human carelessness and self-interest pose threats across the globe, it becomes clear that loving one another is going to be necessary for survival. Wendell Berry said it well when he said we either love one another or die individually and as a species. How do you do that? How do we find our way to living, and to keep living, such self-giving love? Thank goodness Jesus gave us the way to do it. The secret he gave us is: “Abide in my love.”

Jesus keeps saying to us, “Abide in my love.” No matter how much the world fails or we fail, we are loved. No matter how isolated the world makes us, or we make ourselves, we are loved. No matter how afraid we are or how evil the world can be, we are perfectly loved. He said, “Abide in my love.” That means we are to be immersed in that love. We are to

place ourselves inside it daily, let it wash over us. It tells us who we are and it tells us how to see the world. We are to hold on to it, stand everyday underneath the waterfall of it, and lift up our lives to it.

This is what we do when we gather for worship. How can we ever live self-giving love day after day, year after year, until we connect and stay connected to the source of love? Try as we might, we will always be lousy at love. We are too inconsistent, too afraid, too angry, and too protective to live it consistently and generously. We will never be consistent in love unless we connect and stay connected to the source. You and I cannot create love, sustain love, or manage love. We are simply vessels of love or we cannot love. And so Jesus said, “Abide in my love.” After all the bomb checks and the security checks at the door of the church, we entered that church in Kenya on Valentine’s Sunday to celebrate, of all things, love. One day my son said to me he wished he had a master. I didn’t know what he was talking about. He said he would like to have a karate master. He had just seen the movie, “Karate Kid.” He had been captivated by all the martial arts in the movie and wanted to be a disciple of a master like that. My son expressed a universal longing of the heart to live in loyalty under wise and worthy command. We have been shaped for that and we are in need of it. And

here is Christ extending it. Let love be your master. Christ-love is our master. We are to bow to it, consent to it. We are to live daily under its command. Each Sunday we renew our vow. Each morning we pray that on that day we act in love, that we speak in love with whomever we meet, whatever opportunities we face. I think we all have been created for obedience. Obedience to love is the only obedience that leads us into life, into joy. Obedience to love means joy at last. I don’t know all the expressions this love is to take, each circumstance will determine what response is appropriate, but the command is to love. It is always good to question ourselves, like the Baptist leaders in Africa asked in Kenya, “in what are we abiding?” I will always be grateful for the transparency of the emotions and the sincere desire to be obedient that filled those discussions. So, what does it mean for you to live under love’s command in a hostile world?

APRIL/JUNE 2015

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Living Under

Love’s Command in a Hostile World