P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

EXTRAVANT LOVE FOR THE ENEMY

At first Brett Butler thought he was going in just for a tonsillectomy. He was batting .390 for the Los Angeles Dodgers in spring training and 1996 looked like a good season coming up for the ballclub and their red-hot center fielder. But then came the bad news from ENT doctor Bob Badlage and his team of physicians at DeKalb Medical Center. Brett Butler had squamous cell carcinoma — cancer. They took the tumor-ridden tonsils out, and Butler tells in his book, Field of Dreams, how the next two weeks were the most horrific pain of his life. Absolute agony. He was a born-again Christian, a man who believed in God and in prayer, but this was the most soul-shredding hurting of his life. “There was no relief, no letup,” he writes.

Finally they had to release a statement to the public media, telling Brett’s many fans that he had cancer. Fellow Christian athletes in the Dodger organization, strong men like Eric Karros, Todd Hollandsworth, and Todd Worrell all were quick to respond with faxes and prayers.

On May 20, 1996, the evening before the surgery, slated at Emory University Hospital, a group of spiritually-minded friends gathered at Brett’s bedside to support him. They anointed him. They laid their hands on him. They prayed for him. As most baseball fans know, Butler recovered from cancer and came back to play again, returning to the game he loved on September 6 of the same year.

But the thing I want you to notice with me here as we begin our Tuesday Bible study is this: standing by Brett’s bedside in prayer, as this 39-year-old athlete prepared to go under the knife, was a fellow ballplayer named John Smoltz. Smoltz was also an evangelical Christian, a man who prayed before games, a man who attended chapel services on the road, a man who knew how to quote James 5:14 which talks about anointing with oil and praying for the sick.

And just one more thing: Smoltz, as many of you immediately recall, was a member of the Atlanta Braves. A tomahawk-chopping, Dodger-hating, kill-Tommy-Lasorda, I-can’t-stand-L.A. Atlanta Brave. This fireball-throwing pitcher, who had many times tried to get Brett Butler out at the plate, now laid his hands on his fellow believer and prayed to God to heal his foe — and his Christian friend.

Isn’t that a great story? You talk about seeing the big picture! And it takes us right to this beautiful book of Ephesians, and now verse 2 as Paul invites you and me to stand at the same bedside. Here it is:

“And live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

You know, out of the four gospels, only Luke tells how Jesus, stretched out on the cross, also experiencing great pain, was willing to pray for an enemy. And not a casual baseball enemy, where the rivalry ends as soon as you take off your jersey and finish your shower. No, Jesus prayed for the soldiers as they were driving in the nails. He prayed for the leaders of Israel as they signed His death warrant. He loved and forgave Pontius Pilate as he was washing his hands in that basin of scarlet water. And here in Ephesians 5:2 Paul encourages you and me to do the same: to live a life of love. To imitate Jesus — we talked about that yesterday — in forgiving others, even when it seems impossible.

It’s always true that we learn the art of imitating, of copying the success of someone else, by simply being with that person and watching them. That’s true in algebra and true in parenting and true at the office. You stay close and you keep your eyes open. And if we want to learn the art of sacrificial love, then we must watch this Person, this Calvary Lamb, who did it better than anybody.

Eugene Peterson puts a little bit of that flavor in his rendering or Ephesians 5:2. Listen:

“Mostly what God does is love you,” he writes. “Keep company with Him and learn a life of love. Observe HOW Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of Himself to us. Love like that.”

I guess if love were a score-keeping thing, Jesus wouldn’t have even made the trip. He certainly wouldn’t have forgiven those soldiers, because there was no way in heaven or on earth that the score could be evened. I mean, Christ was dead just a few hours later. But friend, this is a kind of love which, even though we can’t match it, is something we should copy. We should strive. We should aspire. And we should daily LOOK at it. Think about it. Meditate on it. Study it with our friends — whether they’re wearing Dodger Blue or the tomahawk insignia of the team from Georgia.

In his Tyndale New Testament Commentary, Francis Foulkes exhorts his readers to devote themselves to this business of LOOKING at the love of Jesus.

“Love is to characterize the Christian’s daily progress along the road of life,” he writes. “Indeed this verse sums up the whole section, and sets aside all the negatives with its one great positive command. There is a perfect example, even in human flesh, which has been given and can be copied. Love answering love, love motivated by love, love made possible by the initial love of Christ, is one of the great themes of the Johannine literature; but Paul has it too.” Then he adds: “His love was expressed in giving, and that to the point of sacrifice.”

That leads us into a second issue, and our discussion these past two days of “imitation” and “examples” makes it necessary. True, the cross of Calvary was an incredible act — and example — of love. We can learn from it. We need to reflect on it, and then, “go and do thou likewise.” You and I need to love like that too. But Jesus didn’t die just to be kind, or just to be an example. Calvary wasn’t simply a dramatic act, the biggest “turn-the-other-cheek” vignette of the universe. It was also the atonement for our sins. Some people in Jerusalem watched that day, and Christians have been watching it, and painting it, and singing about it, and buying radio time to proclaim it ever since. But Jesus’ death on the cross would have solved the sin problem for this world even if it had happened at midnight with zero witnesses permitted to watch. This same Tyndale study curriculum tries to express that reality; here it is:

“There is not a single place in Paul’s writings,” Dr. Foulkes writes, “nor in the New Testament generally, where the death of Christ can be spoken of ONLY as an example to be followed, without the further expression of its atoning significance. This is stated here when it is said that for us He died, presenting Himself an offering and a sacrifice to God.”

In other words, Paul is saying, here is a gift that moves beyond trying to make a point. It goes beyond trying to teach or instruct us. It gets its very power, its extravagant beauty and fragrance, precisely because it is MORE than a teaching tool. Jesus once acknowledged that if He was lifted up on a cross, people would see. Such an act would “draw all men” unto Himself, and praise God it does. But the efficacy of the cross, its atoning strength, takes place whether or not we learn to imitate and copy the love it demonstrates.

One more thought as we conclude. Dr. Foulkes, in this Tyndale commentary, quotes himself from another Ephesians resource, written by F. B. Meyer. And here’s his great soundbite:

“To our eyes the cross can only present an ‘awful scene of horror, but in love so measureless, so reckless of cost, for those who were naturally unworthy of it,’ there was an action that ‘filled heaven with fragrance.’ Then Foulkes quietly concludes: “So by implication the life that a man in Christ lives in sacrificial self-giving to God and to his fellows has a fragrance before God and in the world.”

I love the idea that this gift was so huge, so monumental, that it filled all heaven with fragrance. I say with all the respect in the world that Brett Butler, who made his home in Atlanta, and who had formerly been with the Braves, was in an Atlanta hospital for that surgery and that prayer service. John Smoltz really only had to drive across town to make an expression of love . . . and thank the Lord for His goodness. But friend, Jesus came all the way from heaven to earth — all that way — to die for people who didn’t appreciate it. To die for people who wouldn’t watch, who weren’t looking, for people who gambled for His robe as He slowly and agonizingly slipped into a coma.

It was a hot, humid night there in Georgia when Brett’s friends gathered around. It was probably hot at Golgotha too, when they nailed Jesus to the crossboards. The stench of death was in the air; the smell of spiritual defeat was everywhere.

But friend, the love of Jesus has certainly smelled sweet ever since. A fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.