Lord of the Streets, Houston
October 25, 2026
Proper 25, A
Leviticus 19:1-2,15-18
Psalm 1
Matthew 22:34-46
So, I remember watching American Idol years ago; my friends and I would watch, and our favorite part of the show, by far, was the beginning, when people were auditioning to be on the show. We got to watch some good auditions, great feedback. Even better was when we got to watch the mediocre auditions, and the very best were the horrible auditions, because then we really got to laugh at and make fun of people.
Simon Cowel was the mean judge, and he was brutal, in how he tore into people. The really, really bad ones, those were easy pickings for him, but even the so-so singers, he could just be flat out cruel in how he tore them down. That was all part of the show, all part of the fun, and we all just ate it up.
Several seasons in, though, it finally started to dawn on me that we were being entertained with cruelty, and we were a part of that cruelty. It was fun and funny, we thought, and whatever it did to the people we were being cruel to, eh, it didn’t really matter, it’s not like we knew them. They were just TV people.
The problem is, it did matter. Whether just people on TV or not, they were people, and they didn’t deserve cruelty. Whether they could sing well or not, they were people, and they didn’t deserve cruelty.
Another problem was, being cruel to one another became more and more just a standard part of how we treated people. To be fair, cruelty hardly started with American Idol. Cruelty to people is as old as humanity.
Crucifixion, lynching, beating people, raping people, schoolyard bullying, laughing at people because of the shape of their bodies, mocking people for not being strong or good at sports, embarrassing people who aren’t as smart as others. Yeah, cruelty has a very long and damaging life in the history of humanity. The cruelty in that TV show, American Idol, is just one way that showed me how much cruelty is part of our daily lives. We seek cruelty as entertainment today, just as surely as people sat watching folks get crucified or lynched. We seek cruelty as entertainment as surely as kids laugh when a bully attacks another kid, or as adults laugh when we now see politicians and their supporters mock and assault people on the other side.
Cruelty is certainly a part of us, and we often find cruelty fun, when it’s directed at someone else. We’re not so fond of cruelty, of course, when it’s directed back at us. Perhaps that’s because being cruel is not how we were made to be.
When God made humans, God made us to be helpers, supportive of one another. We were made for love, for kindness, to be respected and cherished, to be cared for by one another. That’s who we are. God’s image, the image of love, that’s who we are.
There is also a part of God’s image which is judgment. Of course, God judges us when we are cruel to one another, when we harm one another, but God’s justice is always tempered with God’s mercy. That’s why God’s judgment is considered just, and God’s judgment is to be longed for, as we hear in Psalm 119.
God’s judgment and God’s mercy are tied together, and since we are made in God’s image, we have judgment and mercy tied together in us as well. Sometimes we tend to overdo it with the judgment though. Ok, we often tend to overdo it with the judgment, and too much judgment without grace or mercy, that’s how we get cruelty.
If you’re wrong and I’m hurting, and I start judging you without mercy, when then I just get to start unleashing all my hurt and hatred onto you. I become cruel because I’m judging without mercy.
Well, knowing how we often turn to cruelty, God shows us mercy, and God teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves. That’s pretty much the whole of scripture, right there. Love God, love people.
So, how exactly does that work. I mean, I can say the words, love my neighbor as myself, and I may even mean it, but what does that actually look like? For starters, how do we love ourselves?
I think it’s a generally true statement that we want what’s best for ourselves. I figure we don’t want to suffer. We don’t want to be insulted, looked down on; we don’t want to be hoodwinked, swindled, attacked, insulted, or cheated.
We do want to be respected. We do want to be treated kindly. We want to be cared for and cared about. We want to be cherished. We want to be loved.
So, that’s how God teaches us to love our neighbors. God teaches us to love the people around us by what we do to them and by what we don’t do to them.
I don’t want to suffer, but do I make others suffer? I don’t want to be insulted or looked down upon, but do I insult and look down on others? I don’t want to be hoodwinked, swindled, attacked, insulted, or cheated, but do I do those things to others?
I do want to be respected. I want to be treated kindly, cared for, cherished, loved. Do I treat others that way?
Love your neighbor as yourself. A bit more of that passage from Leviticus says:
You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
A couple things there. One, reprove your neighbor. I had to look up reprove. I thought it meant to tell your neighbor when he’s doing something wrong, and it does, but reprove means to do so with kindness. Reprove is a kindly intent to correct someone. Judgment with mercy. Not cruel, but kind.
That’s how we want to be treated. That’s how we want to be loved. So, that’s how God has told us to treat and love others. If someone’s going off the rails onto a path that is going to be really harmful to them and to others, we should at least try to help point that out, but only if we’re going to do so with kindness. If there’s belittling or shame, well, then we’re probably not going to listened to because that feels like cruelty. So, we reprove one another with kindness and love.
We offer suggestions, and we ask if we can give them. That’s kindness. “Hey, you’re doing this wrong.” That’s not kindness. That’s just judgment without mercy. That’s American Idol, and crucifixion, lynching, beating people, raping people, schoolyard bullying, laughing at people because of the shape of their bodies, mocking people for not being strong or good at sports, embarrassing people who aren’t as smart as others. Judgment without mercy.
We were made for so much more beauty than that. We were made for life, not death; for kindness, not cruelty. We were made for love. Love is God’s commandment to us. Love is God’s very life all around us. Love is the entirety of our religion, summed up in two short sentences. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself.
