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The scripture reading of the morning is from the gospel according to Luke, the sixth chapter. I begin reading at the verse which is numbered 27. Jesus is speaking. But I say to you that here, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those

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who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, to him who strikes you on the cheek offer the other also, and from him who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you, and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again.

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And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?

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For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much again. I say love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your

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reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. Be merciful even as your Father is merciful. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word.

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Amen. I began my work here at First Church on April 1, 1984. It was just a few weeks after that, on a Monday morning, that one of the custodians came running

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into my office upstairs and said, "Hurry up, hurry up, come with me!" I said, "What's the matter?" He said, "There's a lady downstairs in the bathroom and she has no clothes on." Well, I went with him.

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It turned out that one of our street ladies had decided that a sponge bath would be appropriate and chose our ladies' room as the place to take it. Now that night was a meeting of the Board of Trustees, the first meeting of the Board of Trustees I'd gone to.

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And the main question of the evening was whether we should continue to rent the string of horses that we use at our camp or whether we ought to buy the horses. And much discussion went on about this and it was finally decided to buy the horses and that has proven to be a very wise and economical decision.

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That night when I got home, I was not living in my condominium then but living with my mother. She said, "Well, how did things go at the office today?" I said, "Mother, I went to college, I went to seminary, and I went to graduate school."

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But strange as it may seem, in none of those places did they teach me how to deal with unclothed ladies in the church or how many head of horses any individual congregation should own. To say the very least, there's something new in my job description almost every day.

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Now take this last week for example. It was on a Tuesday morning and I was invited to sit in on the training session for our walk-in ministers. Now our walk-in ministers are those who deal with those people who walk into the church

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for assistance. Poor people, needy people, and sometimes very hostile and indeed dangerous people. They come here for food, they come here for shelter, they come here for medicine, they come here for counsel, they come for aid in transportation, they come for a great variety

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of things. And we have about 40 people who are trained to deal with these persons. There's a 20-page manual which they use and they've got to really know that manual. And then they role-play, they play out with each other how to respond to certain things

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that might be said by a walk-in. You see, when they face that person across the table, they don't know at first whether that person is an institutional addict or some kind of con artist or an individual who really has a heartfelt need.

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Now the thing that strikes me the most about the folks involved in our walk-in ministry is their tenderness. An important part of their training is how they treat the person with whom they're dealing. They call them "Sir" or "Ma'am."

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They are compassionate. They are genuinely concerned. They are educationally responsible. They show Christian love.

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This program is led by Laura Phelps and she is helped a great deal by Wayne Holt. And it's an outstanding program carried on by outstanding people. I say outstanding because many Christians would never take on this kind of ministry. They want a ministry which is much easier, one that is not so tough, one that is not

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so dirty, one that is not so potentially hurtful. There are too many Christians, you see, who never want to leave Camelot. Do you remember that Broadway musical of 10 or 15 years ago called Camelot? The title song has lyrics like these describing Camelot.

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The rain may never fall till after sunset. By eight the morning fog must disappear. The snow must never slush upon the hillsides, and by nine the moonlight must appear. Camelot is described, you see, as a kind of English Eden.

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And there are a lot of people who want only to serve in that kind of an Eden. They want people who will respond to them warmly. They want people who will say thanks. They want people who will give them a handshake and a word of gratitude.

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They want hours that are convenient. They want to deal with individuals who, well, who might not be trying to take advantage of that. They don't want to help drunks.

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They're not concerned with people who find their dinner in a garbage dumpster. They're not willing to sit down across the table from some old alcoholic whose eyes are so glazed that you know he's utterly incapable of uttering the words "thank you." They don't want a ministry amongst the dirty and the smelly and the sick and the dangerous.

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They want to see service through stained glass eyes. They never want to leave Camelot. Do you remember a few weeks ago when we had an event here in America called Hands Across America?

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Do you remember the idea was to raise money for the homeless and the hungry and those who were in desperate straits because of unemployment and the like? And the idea was to make a chain of Americans holding hand to hand from sea to shining sea, all the way across America.

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And then following this holding of hands, everybody would contribute and with that money much would be done to help other people. Well, they pulled it off. They didn't manage to get a solid line all across the country.

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And they didn't raise the 50 million they expected. They raised 11 million, which incidentally is less than 1% of the amount of money that our government gives to the poor and needy every year. But what disturbed me the most about the thing was that after it was over, a lot of people

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went home satisfied. They'd done their thing for the homeless. They'd done their thing for the hungry. They had played their part.

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Good old Americans getting together to help good old other Americans. Now, I don't want to sound negative or bitter about this because I'm neither negative nor bitter. But my friends holding hands on a Sunday afternoon, sitting there in your lawn chair, covering

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yourself with suntan oil before you go, and carrying a thermos jug of iced tea or beer, and setting up your barbecue there on the line, that really doesn't do too much for the homeless and the helpless in our society. They said that their main intention was to raise the consciousness of our people.

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And maybe they did do that for a little while, but not for longer than 24 hours. I've searched and searched and searched for other expressions of consciousness raising that have come out of this, and there have been none. It has been just business as usual.

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And the hungry are still hungry, and the homeless are still homeless, and the lonely are still alone. Because you see, those kinds of people don't live in Camelot. If you want to reach those kinds of people, well, you don't reach them in a line on a

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Sunday afternoon sitting there laughing with your friends. You won't find a drunk there. You won't find a person who has difficulty locating transportation there. You won't find the person that steals in order to keep his body and soul together.

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You won't find the individual who's looking everywhere for a fix or a joint. You won't find the person who is physically ill or who is mentally demented or who has any one of a thousand other ugly things wrong with them. Those kinds of people are not in Camelot.

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I read about a church in California that brought a refugee family from overseas. And as soon as the refugees got here, they stole a great sum of money from the church and also made away with a lot of clothing and furniture. And now the church is very angry and they say they're not going to do anything like

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this anymore for anyone because once burned, twice shy. You see what this church is looking for? They want a ministry in Camelot. Is it just to deprive all of the needy because you run into one crooked family?

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Is it just to cancel all of your ministry of outreach because you run into ten families that might rip you off? Listen to what Jesus says. Give to everyone who asks of you and of him who takes away your goods, do not ask for

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them to be given back. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that for you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good only to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?

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For even sinners do good to those who do good to them. I say love your enemies. Do good, lend, expecting nothing in return. And your reward will be great for you will be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful.

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Now those are hard words and especially hard words for people who want to spend their lives in Camelot. Of course, we all know that there really isn't a Camelot, is there? There is no Eden on earth.

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I heard two ladies once arguing over whether people on welfare use their money to buy booze or did not. Now the fact of the matter is a foolish argument because I'm sure some people on welfare do and other people on welfare don't.

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I'm not standing up here this morning to romanticize the poor. Poor people can be just as nasty as rich people. In general, I find it easier to talk to poor people because they're less arrogant, but they're no less nasty.

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I mean, so a poor person goes out and steals with a gun. I had a professor in the school where I used to labor who found a particular piece of furniture that I've been trying to locate. He wanted to sell it to me, but he insisted on being paid in cash.

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And I asked him, "Why? Don't you think my check's any good?" And he replied, "No, it's because if you pay me in cash, then I don't have to report it to Uncle Sam."

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It's just another kind of stealing. Sure, there are some people that get hooked on alcohol and drugs, even though alcoholism and drug addiction is more common amongst those who have more of this world's goods. But I had a deacon in the second church I served who grew marijuana in her backyard,

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her big affluent backyard, and she was arrested and sent to jail for it. The fact of the matter is if sin were blue, each and every one of us would be a certain shade of blue. In my ministry, which isn't that long, relatively speaking, I've had church officers in my first

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church who were put in jail for embezzlement. I had church officers in my second church who were put in there for child molestation. And in that same church, I had two elders who got in trouble for running around with other men's wives.

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My friends, sin is not the priority of any given class or of any given group. If you say you only want to minister in Camelot, you only want to minister to nice people, well, there aren't any nice people. The fact of the matter is that we are all caught up in sin.

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The original Camelot was ruined, you will remember, in the Arthurian legends, by Lancelot, who was an adulterer, by Guinevere, who was deceitful, and by Modred, who was possessed by jealousy. And we see those same things ripping apart the Camelots of this day and age.

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The most pharisaical person I have ever known, the person out of all the persons I have ever known who waved the flag of his faith most aggressively and who condemned others and judged them regularly for their lack of faith, the most severe critic within the church who attacked others within the church that I have ever known, that man regularly fills his mind

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with pornography. He doesn't know I know it, but I do. And I know it irrefutably. There is no Camelot.

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That's the reason Jesus says we are to love those who are unlovable as well as those who are lovable. We are to love the other kind just as much as we love our own kind. But I hear someone say, "Now that can't be done.

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I mean it's ridiculous to say that I should love some drunken old man who's selling filthy pictures as much as I love my husband or as much as I love my little son or my baby daughter." Well before you pursue that objection, let's look carefully at what Jesus said. When Jesus said we are to love the unlovable, that word for love which he uses is a very

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specific word. It's not the love that is a physical love between a man and a woman. It's not that kind of love. It's not the kind of love that would exist between good friends.

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It's not that kind of love. The kind of love that Jesus uses here, and the word is very specific, is a word which means that you do the best you can for another person even when that other person is not at all lovable.

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This kind of love is benevolent goodwill. It's when you wish to someone who may in and of himself be altogether unlovable, it's when you wish for that person and do for that person only the best. See, Jesus doesn't say that everybody is lovable, and he doesn't say that everybody is equally

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lovable. What he says is this. You are to love the unlovable in the sense that you do good for them. Naturally, you cannot love that dirty old man like you love your own children.

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But that's not what Jesus calls you to. He calls you to an aggressive goodness toward that man in spite of the fact that he is unlovable. And that's a separate doing, you see, from your relationship to your little girl. We talk about falling in love, or we talk about feeling love within us.

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Now, this love that Jesus is talking about is not the kind you fall into, and it's not the kind you feel. You may feel repulsed by this person. You may feel offended by what they have done.

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Everything in you may cry out against them because of their behavior. But by an act of will, by an act of commitment, you will be merciful as God is merciful, and you will do for that person the best that you can. See, it's right in this passage that Jesus gives us what's called, you know, the golden

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rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." And shallow critics have often said that that word was not original with Jesus. They point out that Hillel and Philo and Isocrates and Zeno and Confucius and a lot of people said the same thing.

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That's not true. They said almost the same thing. It was a very common teaching in the world before Jesus to say, "Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you."

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Now, notice that. That's set in a negative tone. Do not do to others as you do not want them to do to you. Jesus turned the whole thing around, and he says, "Do for others what you would have others

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do for you." In other words, he calls for an act of commitment, deliberate, purposeful goodwill. Vietnam. We've been out of Vietnam for a good number of years now, and all the soldiers have been

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withdrawn and all the news people have gone away. But the Church hasn't gone away. Eighty percent of the orphanages in Vietnam are run by Christian missionaries. Ninety percent of the leprosariums in Vietnam are run by Christian missionaries.

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There are 350 Christian charitable institutions in Vietnam. There are 1,500 Christian schools in Vietnam. Ministering in a loving and purposeful way to people who still boast about defeating America on the field of combat.

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See what that is? You may not like them, and you may not feel in harmony with them, but you serve them. You act as Jesus would have you act with them because you understand that there really is no Camelot, and that if God has been merciful to you, so you will be merciful to them.

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Albert L. Fawcett used to live in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was a member of the Winfield Methodist Church. He died just a few—about a year ago. And when he died, he left his church a gift of $500,000.

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But there was one string attached to the gift, and that string was this. Within three years of the date of his death, the Winfield Methodist Church would have to move from its present location, right in the heart of the downtown, to a much more attractive location in the suburbs of Little Rock.

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They had to give up their ministry on the front lines of human suffering, with all the ugliness you see in the inner city, all those walk-ins that are beating at your door every single day, and instead become like any other look-alike suburban church. They're all the same, dotting the hills about the big city.

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They have not yet made up their minds what they're going to do. And I will not presume this morning to advise them. But when I heard about this situation, I was reminded of a train accident that occurred outside of Harrisburg a good number of years ago.

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A passenger train derailed. No one was hurt. But they knew that a freight train was coming along that same track behind that passenger train.

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So they sent a conductor back right away with a signal flag to flag down that coming freight so that it wouldn't run into the back of the passenger train. And everyone relaxed because they thought things were taken care of. Suddenly, out of the night, came the freight train and smacked into the back of the passenger

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train. Many were hurt. Some died. The engineer of that freight train managed to leap out of the cab before the trains hit.

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Now in the inquiry which was held, this engineer was asked, "Did you see the man with the warning flag?" "Yes," he said. "I saw a man waving a flag, but the flag he was waving was not a red flag.

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It was a yellow flag. So I thought he just meant for me to slow down." So they sent for the flag. And when they brought it in, they discovered that the flag had been there for so long that

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the sun had bleached all of the color out of it, and what once had been red was now yellow. My brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, old or young, we must look to our colors, for our flag is not the flag of Camelot.

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Our flag is the flag of Christ, and that flag is red with courage and with love, deliberate, purposeful love. And God forbid that our flag should ever turn yellow. Let us pray.

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O God, in our honest moments we know there are no Camelots. We know that we have sinned against thee, and that all others have done the same. Remind us of this when it comes to our time of service. May we offer ourselves to all kinds in the name of the Spirit of Jesus.

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Grant that we might be merciful as thou art merciful, and that we might pour ourselves out in the sacrificial service of those who might never say thanks. And may we do this just because we are trying to be like Jesus and like you. We pray this in his name.

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Amen. Amen. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]