I’ve seen the faces of people who hate me.
It is an incredible breakthrough of understanding when you’re sitting there doing the best you know how to do and … you see these cold eyes staring back at you … a death stare … just … hate.
One time I was giving a speech at Memorial Hospital and then Mayor (and a dear friend) Floyd Adams was sitting next to me. It was during the question-and-answer period and he was moderating when this woman got up and started saying all kinds of hateful things about I’d been doing at Union Mission and about me personally.
She went on and on in a very loud and agitated way.
Floyd leaned over and whispered in my ear while she was screaming, “If you do anything that’s important … people hate you for it. Just grow thick skin.”
I remember nodding my head up and down staring at this woman who just kept giving me the cold eyed vision of … death?
If looks could kill, as the saying goes, I’d be long gone.
What’s funny is that Floyd saw it too and in the middle of it leaned over and whispered … encouragement.
Whenever Floyd and I see one another, which is rare these days, we have this special bond. We embrace regardless of where or in front of who!
Last time was in “Larry’s Restaurant” where he was holding court and I was meeting with two former Union Mission Board members. When I walked in, Floyd and I locked eyes and he stood up as I walked directly to him shaking some hands on the way, and we just hugged.
Hate makes you appreciate … love.
In my last years at Union Mission hate intensified in my life. This coalition of people who hated me came together (Hi Mark! Hi Frank!) and I learned that at the individual level hate is manageable. When it has followers … it’s hard to stop.
And I wasn’t able to stop it. It grew. It infiltrated where I worked. It converted people whom I trusted. It gained steam. Those who are easily manipulated were easily manipulated (you’d be surprised how many are government employees!).
And they blew me away!
And they were self-righteous in doing so.
They were smug and felt vindicated in the end.
And … they won.
Well …they won the battle.
So I need to pull out some of the things that I paid good money to learn in Seminary. In Hebrew there is no real sense of time. Moses wandering in the desert for forty years means … he couldn’t figure out what he was doing for a long, long time. But then he did!
And when Jesus went into a borrowed tomb after being nailed to a cross by people who loved him one day and hated him with all that they were the next, he lay there for three days … or three years … or thirty years … or ninety.
Mark, the first Gospel was written about ninety years after Jesus was laid to rest. But either three days later or ninety years later, Jesus came back and overcame the hate.
I know … there are those who will hate me for saying that. And they will. It’s ok. The point is that the love that Jesus embodied proved more powerful than the hate that threw his dead body in a borrowed tomb.
So, I’ve seen hate directed at me. It did bad things to my life. It cost me … many things.
A year ago at this time, when even those who had always said that they loved me the most left and I wallowed around in darkness …
Well …
I’m still here.
And there are those still who hate me … those who are still enjoying the spoils of the battle that they won … some still at Union Mission … and then the most arrogant of them all who believe that they’ve won everything.
But Moses ended up getting it right.
The love of Jesus trumped the hated of the many.
Oh yeah … before I finish … thank you Floyd. I love you a lot.
Now, where was I?
Oh yeah …
It’s time to play!
