"The Temptation To Hate"
Sermon Transcript for January 19, 2003 By Rev. Charles Hutchinson
Good Morning! The first thing I would like to say is a word of appreciation to Mike and his wonderful staff and the leadership that they are giving at Grace Church. And I know you feel the same about that. Anyway, thank you. Now, this is “Human Relations” Sunday. And on this human relations day, I want to talk to you about a deadly disease, which I will name in a few minutes. Now, Howard Thurman, one of the truly great preachers of our time, once referred to it as one of the hounds of hell. Either way it will wreck and destroy your life if left alone. Now, if you don’t have this disease, you don’t want it. And if you have it, I would like to share with you how to overcome it. And if you have kicked it back in, you do not want to play around with it. It’s nothing to play with.
I’m reminded of a news reporter talking about a L5 tornado that hit Oklahoma City several years ago. Anyway, he went on to say that a group of young people were traveling around and playing around, playing with this tornado that is moving about. I think we…things like that, you know, a play toy. The caption said, “A L5 tornado is nothing to play around with”. Now, this disease, this L5 tornado can bring all kind of havoc on a community physically. But this disease can bring havoc upon your spiritual life in a way that this L5 tornado can do in our physical world.
I will name this disease in a few minutes now. This disease will come knocking at your door. It may be in the morning, it may be at breakfast, it may be during lunch, or it may be during dinner or midnight or any other time of day or night. You can rest assure that this disease will come knocking. But you do not have to invite or embrace this disease in your home. In other words, don’t give up the initiative over your own life. You cannot keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair. Don’t open up to this disease. It is vicious and cancerous and hate is its name. H – A – T – E!
The temptation to hate in our society and in our world is real. Now some people will take it in and bless it. And teach it or give it to their families, friends, and neighbors by word and deed. Listen to the poignant words in the song from South Pacific:
You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear.
You’ve got to be taught from year to year.It’s got to be drawn on your real little ears.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it is too late.
Before you are six or seven or eight.
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are on them made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
Now in such a world as this where hate and bigotry still have a home, where vengeance and violence in our society still have a front row seat, where fear is blowing in the wind and racism is still the order of the day in many places and sets a climate where intolerance is on the rise. It can take root and grow like Johnson grass in a cornfield if left alone. One cannot leave hate alone or else it will choke out love, mercy, justice, and integrity. Hate is like a cancer eating away the soul. The temptation to hate is real. It can be a powerful force working in one’s life to do evil. Let us not underestimate the power of hate.
Now we must pray against hate in our personal life as well as in our own society. Howard Thurman was right. Hate is a hound of hell, and will dog your tracks in a sneaky insult that twists the truth and corrupts justice. We must watch out for hate wherever we find it because it’s in the air. It’s like a virus and it’s just as deadly as the anthrax spores. We must fight against the temptation to hate. Now, in the wake of the 9/11 attack on America, this unimaginable act of terror, we are angry beyond words and justifiably so. Now theologian Ryan O. Neader stated that the proper attitude toward evil is anger. However, Neader so two temptations we must avoid, hatred and vengeance. Now Christian friends, don’t let hate steal your joy, your love, your peace.
Let me share with you how hate stole my joy one day. It’s a personal experience. I just want to share with you what hate did to my life. One cool evening quite a few years ago, my Dad and I were waiting for a bus on the corner downtown, in the little town of Otalla, Alabama, to go to Gaston by way of Alabama City. We called it the Tri-Cities. But anyway, we were waiting there minding our own business when three people came out of this drugstore. One fellow towering over all the other; he was a huge hunk of a guy. And then as though they were going over, and I wish they had, it seemed like something said—Satan or the Devil or something said something to this big guy, “Turn around and look at them”. And he did. He stopped, turned around and looked at me—right at me and just began to tear in to me with verbal abuse. “You rag so and so yuckity yuck.” I think he was two sheets in the wind. I don’t know but I think he was on White Lightning or something of that nature. But he turned around and he just turned to me and just began to tear me apart. He looked up at my Dad and said, “You don’t like it?” And my Dad said, “Please go home and leave us alone, leave my son alone. Don’t say those things about my son.” And he went on, kept on. And about that time maybe 10 or 15 people had gathered around and they were kind of snickering and grinning and laughing at what the man was doing. But finally, thank God, he did go home. And there we were. About that time the bus drove up and we got on. Segregation was something in those days. The long seat in the back of the bus was for black people. And there were two little seats right up in front of the long seat. And we had the two-seater. We didn’t say anything—I didn’t say anything to my Dad. My Dad didn’t say anything to me. We went over to Gaston in silence. But I looked out the window of the bus sometime in the mirror image, and my Dad was crying, tears dripping on his chin. And I looked at that sight—my Dad was helpless in that sense to do anything. Dad never said a word but for me something was planting a seed or something guiding for me that very moment as I saw my Dad crying. I think that is the thing that got me more than what the man was saying, Dad feeling helplessness. This thing began tearing at me. And that night I went to bed and I didn’t sleep very much. And from that night on I was like two years had passed, I didn’t sleep too well that night. I’m saying that I had night terror on this man. I found ways to destroy him. To put him up against a firing squad and shoot him so many times. Drop bombs on his life. I did everything I could to tear him apart. And this thing began to grow and grow and grow. Hate began to take over. I began to not do so well at home. I was in the tenth grade at that time. We used to get whippings back in those days; they don’t whip you today, you know. But I got a few whippings. My mother said to my dad, “What’s wrong with Charles? What’s wrong with him?” I was a pretty good student and I began to flunk out, make bad grades in school. All because of what was happening to me inside. It was a civil war that was tearing me up inside. Hate is a cancer!
And then one day after two years in this cesspool of hate, I began to cry to God, “Lord, I can’t live like this any longer.” I was breaking the speed limit of life on the road to nowhere. But I called on God. And God, it looked like it took the Trinity to deal with me. And God said to the Holy Spirit, “Stop it. Slow him down!” And the Holy Spirit said, “You can’t solve this thing by yourself.” And through the Holy Spirit, I didn’t need a Band-Aid solution. I needed radical surgery. And through the Holy Spirit would Dr. Jesus please and do the surgery? What happened to me that night was miraculous to say the least. I went to bed; it happened to be the first good night’s sleep I had in two years. I woke up the next morning with a new lease on life, a new person, a new creation, a new me! It was, when God finished with me that night, it was a spiritual metamorphous. A transformation! It was something like what Marjorie Kimbrow said in the recent Advent booklet, “Becoming a Christian was like being carved into a Jack-O-Lantern. It was as if God picked me from the pumpkin patch. Brushed off the dirt, scraped out the seeds of hate, the bitterness, vengeance, revenge, and violence and carved in me the smiling face and put a lamp or light inside of me and say, “Go shine for all the world to know what I have done for you.”” God did it! God took my old self away and created a new self. God’s love is so powerful and so great.
Oh, my friends, what a great God we have! Dan and Mike, it was like moving from humbug to hallelujah. It was like moving from darkness to light, from death to life! God is so good. God loves us, all of us, with an everlasting love. God loves us so much and calls us to love one another. Either God is the creator of all people or God is the creator of no people, either all people are brothers and sisters or no people are brothers and sisters. There are some words on a poster out in the foyer that goes like, “Wake up my heart, God’s reign is near. The piece of the kingdom is in my hands. If the wolf can be the guest of the lamb, and the bear and the cow be friends, then no injury or hate can be a guest within the kingdom of my heart.” When one chooses, God in Christ, one loses his or her option to choose as to who will be one’s brother or sister.
Oh, what love! God has called us to love as well. I forgave the man. I stopped dropping bombs on him. I forgave him although I never saw him again. I forgave the man. And I forgave myself because God has forgiven me. God loves all of us. No wonder Desmund Tutu said in his book, “There is no future without forgiveness.” That is the way it is my friends. Not the way we hope it will be, but the way it is. Amen.
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