Malcom Gladwell, in his best-selling book, The Tipping Point (Little, Brown & Co., 2000), argues that large social and economic movements, both good and bad, are often set in motion by one simple act on the part of one person or small group of people.  Though other factors led up to it, it was Paul Revere’s ride, for example, that mobilized this country to its War for Independence.  One man, one horse.  Doesn’t seem like much.  But, in the right time and place with the right man and horse, that’s all it took.  Continent-devastating epidemics, such as with AIDS, can often be traced to one or two people who were initially responsible for spreading the disease.  Gladwell calls these factors, these one-time-one-person events that spark larger movements “tipping points” because they tip the social scale one direction or the other in ways that have exponentially larger results.  His well-documented thesis is that little things often make the big difference.

This even applies to churches.  Healthy churches making significant contributions rarely do so because of one large successful program or personality.  Lots of little things make the big difference and keep things “tipping” in the right direction.  One person caring enough to pick up a piece of trash on the way into church.  One person saying hello to a stranger.  One person praying.  One Sunday School teacher caring enough to be prepared.  One nursery worker loving one baby.  One person giving.  It’s more often than not the little things that make the collectively bigger difference.  Maybe knowing this will help us tackle the enormity of what Jesus commands in this text. 

We know what this means, don’t we?  These words of Jesus mean that we who call ourselves Christians have to love each other, like it or not.  Or, perhaps I should say, whether we like each other or not, we have to love each other.  It’s not an option.  It’s a command.  Jesus said, “‘A new command I give you:  Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’”  Jesus actually says that whether or not we love each other is the single most defining proof to those who don’t belong to him that we do. 

The love of Christians for one another reaches across all lines of belief and disbelief and leaves an indisputable testimony.  It’s not the size of our church buildings.  Not how many missionaries we send overseas.  Not how much money we raise for our programs.  Not because we speak in tongues or don’t speak in tongues.  Not our stance on ethical or moral matters.  None of those.  The greatest evidence that something supernatural is happening here is that we are busy extending God’s love in us to each other.  When John wrote the first of his three letters, he put it this way.  “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers (1 John 3:14).”  So, we know what this means, don’t we?

Friends love each other for more obvious reasons.  We all tend to gravitate to those who are strange in the same ways we are or whose personalities are warped in the same ways and call it friendship.  But, anyone can love someone else they find immediately lovable.  Even those who don’t want anything to do with Jesus can be very good friends to their friends.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus even asked, “‘If you love those who love you . . . do not even the pagans do that (Matthew 5:46-47)?’”  And, of course, no one can stand in the way of a mother’s love for her children, even those who are the kind of people that only a mother could love.  And, even though mothers would willingly push love to its heroic limits to care for their children, most people think of a mother’s love as something natural.  We actually think it unnatural if a mother doesn’t love her young because even animal mothers love their own at the risk of their own lives.  It’s so easy to love the lovable you don’t need God’s help.

Maybe you’ve seen the television commercial.  The cable guy has just installed a new satellite system for one of his male customers giving him every conceivable movie and sports channel available.  The customer is so overwhelmed he tells the cable guy, “I love you.”  “I know, sir,” says the cable guy, like he’s heard it before from those for whom he did something they appreciated.  That’s called transactional love.  Getting loved for something given that was lovable.  Jesus said that we haven’t begun to get close to love until we extend it to those who have taken from us not given to us.  And, where God requires that kind of love to begin is right here in the church.  Our love for each other or lack of it is our best or worst sermon as the case may be.  We know what Jesus’ words mean.

We even know why, don’t we?  Don’t we?  Because Jesus loved us.  Not because we were lovable but because love is what he is, who he is and why he is.  The apostle John, who wrote this gospel, later wrote that God’s love doesn’t originate as a response to something we’ve done or not done for him.  “God is love.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:8, 10).”  Only when love is measured from God to us instead of the other way around does it make sense.  When we are having trouble believing that God could love us it is because we are measuring love with ourselves as the starting point.  But, before his love has anything to do with us it doesn’t have anything to do with us.  Before it was about us, it was about God.  And, that’s why we are commanded to love.  And, that’s also what makes it so complicated. 

Loving like God loves means not paying back evil for evil.  Someone asked me recently if I believed in the death penalty.  For the first time in my life, I’m genuinely troubled by it.  Not because Timothy McVeigh doesn’t deserve a very fitting punishment for what he did.  It’s just that I am so grateful I didn’t get what I deserve from God for what I’ve done.  “The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).”  That’s what we deserve from God and we didn’t get it because of what Christ did for us.  Jesus is saying that, if we didn’t get what we deserve from God, then we should let that measure our response to others when deciding whether or not to give them what they deserve. 

The other day, on the way home, I was driving east in the far left-hand lane of Interstate 30.  At this particular point there were four lanes and I was driving at least ten miles per hour faster than I should just to keep from getting run off the road.  All of a sudden this guy in a bright red pickup began to pass me at a very high rate of speed and whipped his truck very sharply right in front of me.  As he passed, he stuck a face that only his mother could love out the window and stared at me with a glare that had nothing to do with Jesus.  It was obvious that he figured that I was in his lane.  You know, his lane.  And, I should have known that before he arrived on the scene and gotten out of his lane so he could go on his way even though there were three other perfectly good lanes.  Anyway, let’s say it bugged me just a little.  So, when he got around me and I figured he was looking in his rearview mirror to see if I knew sign language, I gestured by simply stretching out my arms and shrugging my shoulders as if to say, “What’s your problem?”  Of course, Nancy gets furious with me when I do this kind of thing.  My luck, it’s one of our deacons.  But, you know what he did?  He shrugged back.  And, then I shrugged.  And, then, he shrugged.  This went on and on until finally, we just gave up.  Neither one of us expected to stop shrugging and start hugging.  By now, I felt like an idiot.  When you pay back kind for kind, you only diminish yourself.  Which is what Nancy keeps trying to tell me.  And, so does Jesus.

Jesus isn’t interested in anyone being diminished but only enriched and empowered.  Only love enriches and empowers.  That’s why he commanded us to love one another.  But, what complicates the whole thing is that God went further than to not give us what we deserve.  He went beyond that to extend to us a grace we could never earn.  “The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 6:23).”  So, to not repay evil for evil is only one aspect of love.  Frankly, it’s the easiest.  To just walk away when you’ve been stepped on.  But, Jesus commands more.  He commands us to love as he loved.  We haven’t loved until we’ve at least attempted to enrich those who have impoverished us. 

Assuming that we want to love the way God has commanded, how do we actually go about doing it?  Well, maybe loving as much as Jesus commands is not so much a matter of one major sacrificial effort, such as dying on a cross.  For us, it may mean learning the power of just one little thing.  Something that tips the relationship toward hope and grace. 

When counseling with couples who are struggling with how to love the way marriage demands, I’ve found this principle helpful.  There is so much anger and resentment built up through years of neglect or worse so that they are separated by a wall of negative feelings thicker than three-inch steel.  But, they’ve decided to try.  It’s just that the mountain they must climb seems so tall, too tall.  So, I suggest they try doing one simple thing.  Just one thing that means taking one small loving step toward each other.  A cup of coffee.  Making the bed.  A nice card.  Whatever.  Just one little thing without expecting anything in return.  Sometimes, just one simple act of love can tip the marriage toward hope.

When Nancy and I were dating I couldn’t afford a dozen roses any more than I can now.  (Why do roses cost three dollars a piece but sixty dollars a dozen?)  Anyway, I love to give Nancy roses.  And, there was this little flower shop in her neighborhood where the roses were always affordable if I only bought one at a time.  So, about once a week I’d buy Nancy a rose.  Then, one day I saw where she’d been drying each rose I gave her and tying them together in bundles.  And, I realized that I’d finally given her dozens of roses, one at a time. 

Sometimes, that’s how you have to love.  If you can’t, for whatever reason, do all the loving you should at one time, maybe you could start toward it by doing just one loving thing.  Something simple.  A cup of coffee.  A nice card.  A word of encouragement.  One word of prayer.  Sometimes, just one little act of love can tip a relationship toward hope.

When we were getting ready for David Severen’s funeral this week I was visiting with his sons.  They remembered him as their hero.  Not because he came home from World War II, Korea and Vietnam with a chest full of medals after flying every airplane in the Air Force inventory but four.  But, because of the simple things he said and did over many years that made him their hero.  Swimming with them in the summer.  Helping them fix their first car.  Looking for lost golf balls in a creek.  A word of encouragement here and there.  That’s what they remember.  That’s what most of us remember about our fathers and mothers who loved us.  Love came in little installments not major heroic sacrifices.  Just dozens of little acts of love all tied together in bouquets of priceless memories.   

And, that’s how you do the loving Jesus commanded.  That you even want to says you know him.  So that you keep giving even the smallest effort until one day your love tips the scales toward hope.  And, someone who might have never believed in God finally does because they saw him in you and the way you won’t quit loving no matter what.