Sermon Tone Analysis

The Elephant Man

The movie The Elephant Man tells the true story of John Merrick.

Merrick was born in the slums of England in 1862, and almost from birth experienced massive rejection due to his grotesque appearance.

Merrick suffered abnormalities that resulted in a large and severely misshapen head, loose, rough skin, and twisted arms and legs.

His mother loved dearly, but died when he was ten.

His new step-mother didn’t take to him, and at twelve, he was expected to work to contribute to the family finances.

After two years working in a cigar shop he was dismissed because his deformities meant he could not keep up the required pace.

His father found him a job, of all things, as a door-to-door salesman.

This only accentuated Merrick’s self-loathing.

When people opened their doors and saw him people would literally scream and slam the door in his face.

Those who knew who he was refused to answer their doors.

After this “failure” Merrick’s father began beating him.

Merrick wound up on the street and was rescued by a kindly uncle, the only person who would help him out.

Not wishing to further burden his uncle Merrick left to live in a squalid workhouse for drunks, cripples and the mentally ill.

His life there was so miserable that he offered himself to a carnival owner as a sideshow act.

Merrick was a hit.

People would pay money to line up and observe him like some animal in a zoo.

But the carnival finally provided him with security and a place he belonged.

It was while the sideshow was in London that Merrick met Dr Frederick Treves.

Disgusted by Merrick’s treatment Treves wanted to help.

He gave Merrick his card, but lost track of him.

The police started clamping down on the sideshows, so Merrick was sent to Belgium to work in a sideshow there.

But when Belgian police also clamped down Merrick was forced to make his way back to England.

As he limped down Liverpool Street station, foul smelling and misshapen, a crowd gathered simply to watch him.

The police took him aside to sort things out, but Merrick’s speech was so slurred by his deformities that they couldn’t understand him.

It was at this point Merrick showed them Dr Treves’ card.

The police sent someone to get him, and Treves rushed back.

He took Merrick back to London hospital and began a newspaper appeal for funds to help Merrick.

The response was very warm, and soon sufficient that Merrick was able to have his own house on the hospital grounds with permission to live there permanently.

Treves’ care marked a real turning point for Merrick.

At first Merrick would act like a frightened child and hide when anyone came into his room, but over time he began to engage some in conversation.

Dr Treves discovered that Merrick was in fact highly intelligent and sought to nurture his growth.

Yet Merrick’s greatest hurdle was still to fall.

All his life Merrick had known only fear and rejection from women.

They had literally run from him.

So Dr Treves asked an attractive widow he knew if she could come into Merrick’s room, smile at him and shake his hand.

When she did Merrick broke down into a ball of tears, later telling Treves that she was the first woman in his life apart from his mother to have showed him kindness.

That was a breakthrough moment for Merrick.

In the coming years more and more people, women included, would meet him and show him kindness.

He began meeting Countesses and Duchesses.

He even had many visits and letters from the Princess of Wales, forming a friendship with her.

Throughout this time Dr Treves reports Merrick changed dramatically.

He began to develop some self-confidence, to spend time traveling in the country, to discuss poetry with another new friend, Sir Walter Steel.

Merrick died in April 1890.

His deformities had never allowed him to sleep lying down as most people do.

He had to sleep in a sitting position, his head resting on his knees.

He apparently tried one night to sleep lying down, to be more “normal”, and sadly dislocated his neck and died.

Merrick’s story shows us the power of love and acceptance.

Rejected all his life, treated as a “thing”, it was the loving welcome of others that liberated him to become all he could be.

His life was made tragic not by his deformities but by the response people made to them.

Source: Reported at www.elephant-house.fsnet.co.uk

It is true that perhaps the greatest tragedy we know is not to live a life without one ability or another, but to live a life without love.

Love is not a theory, it is a practice, and it is practice of sacrificing for the well being of others.

Jesus Christ Himself said that all of the law hung on the two commandments; love God and love your neighbor as yourself, and that by keeping those commandments, we keep the whole law of God.

And of course, love cannot happen in a vacuum.

Love cannot happen in isolation.

Love requires community.

And this is seen even in the creation of mankind, wherein the Bible says that we are created in the image of God.

Part of God’s image is community, and certainly love comes from the nature of God Himself.

And as we will read today, the Bible is very clear, that God is love, but what does it mean to love?

And what does it mean to love one another?

Furthermore, what does it mean to love one another as Christ loved us?

Today, we begin our One Another message series at Valley Bristol, and we will be moving right along with the Avon campus in terms of weekly messages so I encourage you to check out the messages from the Avon campus as well for more detail and teaching each week.

We will be in three sections of Scripture today starting with .

Before we turn there together, let’s pray.

Loving one another is not optional, its commanded by Jesus Himself

I know that this sounds obvious, but think about the ramifications of the fact that this is a command.

First, if we have to be commanded to do it, it must be something that we would ordinarily, or naturally, not do on our own or of our own volition.

And this goes to our own depravity apart from God.

Ever since the fall of man when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, instead of a Godly nature, humans are born with a sin nature.

We are naturally depraved and sinful.

That is our default position, yours and mine.

We think, in our pride, that its obvious that we should love one another, but really, we all have to be taught to love one another.

Think about it.

We have to teach our kids to share and be respectful.

We don’t have to teach them how to lie and steal and disrespect others, that comes naturally.

Furthermore, loving one another is so important to the health and benefit of humanity that Jesus commanded it.

He did not suggest it, it wasn’t a footnote, it wasn’t a clever teaching point.

Loving one another is a command of Jesus that He expects His followers to obey.

And the fact that loving one another is commandment should give you a clue as to how much you actually resist Jesus’ command for you to love others.

And its like we live in a bizarro world, even in our own thoughts and actions.

One the one hand, of course we would be all for loving each other, but on the other hand, we feel justified in withholding from those who strike us as unlovable.

And don’t we spend so much more time pointing out all the unlovable qualities and inconsistencies of those we do not love, than actually loving one another?

Yes, if we are going to love one another, we need to understand that it is a command from Jesus, not a request.

1 Jjohn 3:16-18

So, Jesus commands us to love.

But the love that Jesus commands us to express to one another is not just any love,

We are to love each other as Christ loved us

How did Christ love us?

He laid down His life for us.

What kind of love does God want us to express toward one another?

Sacrificial & Costly Love

The Apostle John points out in no uncertain terms that this is love:

That we lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters (i.e., family in the Lord).

This whole section of Scripture that we just read is entirely about sacrificial love.

Costly, difficult to give, love.

Nonetheless, this is how we are to love one another.

And in case we try to skirt the issue, John clarifies in verse 18 and says that our words or speech is not the kind of love that God is calling us to.

God is commanding us to practice sacrificial love with and for our church family.

To be sure, our culture has replaced the word sacrifice, with the word, compromise.