Unity is found in our shared burdens

A few days ago, I shared the sermon Andy Stanley delivered to North Point Community Church Sunday. I said it was the most powerful sermon I'd ever heard. 

In his sermon, Andy said the law of Christ is to love one another. He then used scriptures to define love as carrying one another's burdens. That definition is hard to argue from a Christian faith perspective; Christ died on a cross to share the loving message that we no longer have to carry our burdens.

I'll take those burdens off your hands, he said.

Sometimes love can seem very abstract. It can come across as an emotion that is hard to measure. But the good news for Christians who know that love is defined by how willingly and how obediently we carry our neighbor's burdens, we absolutely can measure that.

Or is that such good news?

Because this morning, as I'm sitting here reflecting on that, I know if I can take an accounting of my love, so can the God who said this is my ultimate just go ahead and forget about the rest of them command.

When I ask myself the question I'm asking myself this morning, I have to wonder if God is in the background, or maybe he is right smack dab in the middle of my soul, asking the same question: how much of my time and energy this week will I spend fighting with my own burdens, and how much will be spent carrying someone else's?

Let's just say the answer - with no small amount of shame - is a ratio that leans heavily toward looking out for myself.

The reality is many of us lean heavily towards looking out for ourselves. We're wired that way. As part of that wiring, we can start to see "others" as a hurdle to dealing with our burdens and not an ally. Either we see them working against us - they are the enemy - or we begin to see our dealing with their burdens as something that sucks away the time and energy I need to deal with my own.

Either way, the answer does nothing to encourage love for one another. Quite the opposite really.

Our culture has become divided into groups that mistakenly think they are aligned to help each other best solve and prevent the burdens in their lives. The first strategy of almost all of these groups is to decide who the enemies are - who is the cause of our burdens and how do we extinguish or minimize the burden they add to our lives. These are groups that believe going to war with others is the best way to ease the burdens of our selves.

The group I see this displayed most prominently in? The church.

The church first divides itself among Christians and non-Christians. Those demonic non-Christians are standing in the way of us dealing with our burdens as Christ followers. And then the church further divides itself and starts eating its own. Those crazy Catholics are standing in the way of us Baptists dealing with our burdens.

And we all end up on this crazy hamster wheel of trying to avoid and eliminate burdens in our lives by keeping the people out we think are adding to the burdens in our lives all while the burdens in our lives keep adding up and adding up and adding up. Yet, we just stay so busy turning that wheel to even notice it.

It's insanity. I'm sorry, but it just is.

Christ chose to die on a cross as the loudest and clearest way possible to say I'll carry your burdens. He was driving home the message that the best way for him to carry our burden was to understand our burden. I'm dying a painful death, he said, to be certain that you know I understand your pain. I can feel it.

Christ didn't model running off to selfishly deal with his own burdens to love us. He modeled diving head first into a grave to do it.

Christ was saying life is not a race to outrun the individual burdens in our lives. Life is a be still and listen to one another's burdens journey. Christ was telling us the best way to be at odds with one another - the best way to stay divided - is to run from the burdens in our lives. He was telling us the best way to unite - in love - is to see burdens as the most common ground we all have.

We all have burdens. We all will ALWAYS have burdens. We aren't outrunning them.

So instead of fighting against each other to avoid unavoidable burdens, why don't we join hands and say let's journey through the burdens of life together. Instead of seeing individual burdens as a need to declare war, why can't we embrace on another's burdens as the first cries for a peace treaty.

I have to ask myself this morning, am I declaring war on love, or looking for peace. It's a question that actually can be answered. It's not rhetorical. The answer is found in looking at how much of my time and my energy today and tomorrow and the next day will be spent dealing with my own burdens. How much will be spent trying to hear and understand and help someone else with theirs?

The answer is a measure of love.

In my case, the answer identifies how much I need to - and how I can - love better.