Matthew Shepard & Erase Hate

1 John 2:7-11          Matt Shepard and Erase Hate

           Everyone is aware I think of the rubbery wrist bands with colours as vast as the rainbow, each colour representing a specific cause. I think the first of them may have been Livestrong (yellow). I have many myself but my choice is The Matthew Shepard Foundation's Erase Hate wrist band (purple).

           Long before I had any inckling of being gay my spirit was wrenched by the knowledge that this young man was killed in such a brutal, hateful manner simply because he was whom God made him to be. This crime against humanity touched me to the core, perhaps that subconscious part of me that knew I was gay. I somehow recognized that such a crime was also against me.

          Erasing hate is what this reading is all about. Hate is an absolutely vicious word and one that really deserves to be banished from the language in both word and in action. Yet we use the word so flippantly all day long. I hate brussel sprouts! I hate this political figure. I hate this, I hate that. It is no big leap then that we hate a person or a group of people. You can dislike brussel sprouts, you can dislike anyone, but hate? Hate is an intolerable.

          This reading is perfectly clear. We cannot hate and say we are lovers of a God that loves us so much that he too was hung to die, not so far removed from what happened to Matthew Shephard. 

          Perhaps for one day, listen for the word hate in conversation, from others mouths or perhaps our own. Think about a young man hanging to die on a fence. Think about a man hung to die on a cross for us. Think about hate so vile that it brought a crowd to shout Crucify him! Crucify him! 

           When we hate, even using the word, we enable evil and turn our backs on our loving God. When we hate we put another nail in our Lord's hand as if to say, how about a little bit more suffering? 

           Eradicate the word for our vocabulary. Erase Hate completely.

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says, ‘I am in the light’, while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness.