Living in Community: Disrespect
Living in Community: Respect
When you believe the gospel, you change. The Holy
Spirit indwells you, guides you into the changes you need to make to be the
person God has created you to be and empowers you to make those changes. The
reason why changes are necessary is that we tend to drag the old way we lived
our lives into our new life in Christ. If you are not changing, you most likely
are not following. There are some things that we learned that are anti-Christ,
behaviors opposed to His teachings, and ways of relating to one another that
just don’t fit into our new reality. Scripture has pictured this new reality as
being the body of Christ. Jesus is the head, every believer, every disciple, is
part of the body.
1 Corinthians 12:27 (NLT)
All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of
you is a part of it.
Being the body is a beautiful picture of a new
reality for you. It’s a picture of your personal belonging, importance,
significance, and unity with others in the body. Consider if we are one with
Christ, we are one with all others that are one with Christ.
1 Corinthians 12:13 (NLT)
“…we have all been baptized into one body by one
Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.”
We belong to each other. We are a part of one
another. Last time we explored one of the deterrents to a healthy body that we
drag into our new life in Christ. We exposed self-centeredness with its
attitude of “It’s All About Me” and its slogan “Feed Me” as cancer that sickens
the body. Today we need to look at another anti-Christ behavior that we tend to
bring with us into our new life in Christ. That behavior is Disrespect.
To disrespect someone is to act in an insulting
way toward them. When you disrespect people, you think very little of them;
that this person is insignificant as far as you are concerned. We can be
disrespectful in many ways, profane language, acting rudely, pushy, impolite
and just being offensive. When I was growing up I was told show respect to your
elders. Give up your seat for a senior adult. Open the door for a lady. Remove
your hat inside a building and when the National Anthem is sung. Don’t talk
back to your teacher. Say please and thank you and use your manners.
Slang in the street is “Don’t Dis Me.” In the song
“Both Sides of the Story” Phil Collins sings the lyric: …
White man turns the
corner, finds himself within a different world
Ghetto kid grabs his
shoulder, throws him up against the wall
He says 'would you
respect me if I didn't have this gun
'Cause without it, I
don't get it, and that's why I carry one
Don’t you want to be respected? Don’t you expect
to be treated with a modicum of decorum simply because you are a human being?
Don’t you want to be listened to, recognized and understood? When you
disrespected you feel like some retaliation is in order. We all want others to
respect us; to treat us civilly and to see us.
Have you ever been spat on? I was in a town in
South Korea near the DMZ, just walking with some buddies taking in the sights;
coming towards us were four young men, as we passed one turned and spit at me. Spitting
at someone, especially in the face is a huge sign of disrespect. Disrespect
might be too mild of a word. Anger works. Contempt might be closer. Hatred
might be closer still. The message sent
is that you are a low life scum sucking bottom dweller not worth the air you
breathe. To be spat on in the face means you are rejected, despised, loathed,
considered an abomination. Spitting in
someone’s face is rude, crude, and socially unacceptable in a civilized society
and is just begging for a fight.
I don’t know about you but being spat upon is
pretty gross. I would really have to be following hard after Jesus, really
being full of the Holy Spirit, not to do something very un-Christian in
response.
Matthew 26:62-67 (MSG)
The Chief Priest stood up and said, "What do
you have to say to the accusation?"
Jesus kept silent.
Then the Chief Priest said, "I command you by
the authority of the living God to say if you are the Messiah, the Son of
God." Jesus was curt: "You yourself said it. And that's not all. Soon
you'll see it for yourself: The Son of Man seated at the right hand of the
Mighty One, Arriving on the clouds of heaven."
At that, the Chief Priest lost his temper, ripping
his robes, yelling, "He blasphemed! Why do we need witnesses to accuse him?
You all heard him blaspheme! Are you going to stand for such blasphemy?"
They all said, "Death! That seals his death
sentence." Then they were spitting in his face and banging him around.
They jeered as they slapped him…”
The religious spat in Jesus' face.
Jesus is brought before the civil authorities and
in a great miscarriage of justice sentenced to death.
Matthew 27:27-30 (MSG)
The soldiers assigned to the governor took Jesus
into the governor's palace and got the entire brigade together for some fun.
They stripped him and dressed him in a red toga. They plaited a crown from
branches of a thorn bush and set it on his head. They put a stick in his right
hand for a scepter. Then they knelt before him in mocking reverence:
"Bravo, King of the Jews!" they said. "Bravo!" Then they
spit on him and hit him on the head with the stick.
The religious spat on him, the establishment spat
on Him. They spat on Jesus, the ultimate sign of disrespect. Today people are
still spitting at Jesus. But let us turn away from those outside the Kingdom
and look in. Let’s look at how we treat each other who are one with Christ. If
you spit in the face of a Christ-follower, you are spitting in the face of
Christ.
One of the anti-Christ behaviors we bring into our
new life in the Kingdom of God is disrespecting our brothers and sisters in
Christ. There are countless ways of
being disrespectful and often if we don’t know the culture, if we don’t know
what is expected, we can ignorantly be disrespectful. But that’s not always the
case. During my first stint as a senior pastor, my wife not only got a cold
shoulder from some of our female congregants but received some rejecting
comments. Think back to Junior High or
High School and how catty some gals can be to those not in their click. Getting
to the bottom of this disrespectful behavior was jealousy. Those ladies were
jealous that the pastor’s wife was slim and attractive. They spiritually spit
in her face, they spit in the face of Jesus.
Jealously is basically the desire to have what someone else has when
fully grown the bible names this behavior coveting.
Exodus 20:17 (NLT)
“You must
not covet your neighbor’s house. You must not covet your neighbor’s wife, male
or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your
neighbor.”
When there is sin in the body, the whole body is
aching.
Joshua is a military leader engaged in a campaign
to conquer the Promised Land. He sends a contingent of his warriors to take a
small city; really just child’s play. But his men are defeated. When Joshua asks The Lord why, it is revealed
that one soldier, a man named Achan, took what did not belong to him. (Joshua
7). The defeat of all was because of one person’s coveting. “Dissing another
believer is to cause the entire body problems.” The Divine blessing conduit
gets clogged. When the Church is not moving in the direction God is calling you
have to wonder if there is an Achan in the camp. Can I tell you a cynical
pastor’s joke? Well, I am anyway. A group of my peers was sitting around
discussing how things were going in their respective ministries and one of my colleagues
said: “I think we are one funeral away from revival.”
Being jealous, coveting what someone else has
resulted in behavior that is disrespectful. Maybe such disrespectful behavior
is gossip. Gossip is my attempt to pull someone down to my level. Maybe it's
rejecting, everyone in your click turns down the invitation to attend “you know
whose” celebration. It works the other way also, you don’t invite them to
yours. Maybe it’s that look of disapproval on your face that sends the message
that they don’t meet your standards. Maybe you ignore them, the message is
you’re not wanted. That’s disrespect, that is spiritually spitting on them.
That is spitting in the face of Jesus.
I am at the cinema watching a movie. It was one of
those very rare occasions I bought concessions. I have a hard time paying $15
bucks for popcorn and coke. The folks I sat next to obviously didn’t have the
same concerns. Everyone in that group had a popcorn, drink and the kids had
candy. After the film, they left and I had to wade my way through the mess they
left behind: Popcorn and the popcorn boxes on the floor, candy wrappers on the
floor, partially consumed cokes in the cup holders, napkins on the floor. What
a mess. Being the saint that I am, I tossed my refuse in the trash can on the
way out. No, it wasn’t because I am a saint, its because I worked in a theater
at one time cleaning up after a show. It’s made me conscious of the effort
required to clean up someone else’s movie messes. So I do my part, so others
don’t have to clean up after me.
Philippians 2:3-4 (NIV)
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain
conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you
should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others.
Since we are a living part of the body, since we
belong to each other, we are to have concern for every other member of the
body. We are to be aware, conscious, of what others do, especially when it
comes to the serving that they do for the body. Making this tangible, in the men’s
restroom in this facility, there are paper towels to dry your hands. There is a
trash can for men to drop the paper towels after use. After everyone leaves,
someone serves the body by taking out the trash. What they often find is used
paper towels on the floor because someone missed the can, or when they pulled
the paper from the dispenser the towel ripped and they just dropped the ripped
part on the floor. Such behavior is disrespecting your brother or sister that
has to clean up after you. Leave your mess behind and you are demonstrating
disrespect for the one who serves by cleaning up after you. You don’t even know
who, but you just spiritually spat in their face. You spit in the face of
Jesus.
Here’s a glance down another avenue. You wash your
hands and you see someone else missed the trash can. Picking up after someone
else’s disrespectful behavior is showing respect for that brother or sister who
serves by cleaning up after everyone has left. It is an act of love. Love is
seeking to meet the need of another often at the cost of personal sacrifice.
A lack of sensitivity, sympathy, and empathy, that
inability to put you in someone else's position demonstrates disrespect. When
there is no concern for a brother or sister, its disrespectful. It’s often a
way of the world that we tend to drag into our new life as part of the body of
Christ.
Phil 2:21 (NIV)
For everyone looks out for his own interests, not
those of Jesus Christ.
Don’t allow this verse to be true of you. Here’s a little twist to consider, when you
disrespect a brother or sister in the body, you have also disrespected
yourself. Remember we are all one in
Christ, we are all parts of His Body. I urge you to make the resolution to
avoid being an Achan in the body.
Here’s how to keep that resolution. Exercise the
power already given to you by the Holy Spirit to love. Love is to treat the
other as valuable, to love is to give respect to others. (Bruxy Cavey, Diane Langberg) Choose to be a
lover,
Of course, Jesus said it best:
Matthew 7:12 (NIV)
So in everything, do to others what you would have
them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
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