5 Easter Year C
April 28, 2013
Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
I invite you to
imagine, if you will, that you’re sitting at the table with Jesus and the other
disciples. You’re all in the upper
room with the door shut, maybe even locked. The atmosphere is filled with fear, sadness, and
tension. You’ve known for quite
some time that your beloved teacher is in grave danger. He’s been making the authorities
nervous; he’s been even making his followers nervous. He’s definitely making you nervous. Nobody else
talks the way he does, about his relationship to his Father—and he says God is
his father—and about the new kingdom.
He’s just done something really strange—he’s washed everyone’s
feet. That was a really weird
thing for a teacher to do for his disciples. Most upsetting is his talk about going to a place where no
one else can come. For a while it
was possible to deny that Jesus, your beloved teacher and friend, was going to
die. But there’s no more denying
it now. Judas has left the room,
clearly heading for the authorities to betray Jesus. You long for a word of consolation, of wisdom. Surely, you’re thinking, Jesus will
have a detailed plan to help cope with this catastrophe. Surely he will have clear instructions
to be followed in his absence.
They will be complex, you expect, and you and the others will have to
pay close attention to the details.
You’re not prepared for what Jesus actually does say, not at all.
As it turns out,
there’s no big plan for what to do after the unthinkable happens. Jesus first talks about the Son of Man
having been glorified and that God has been glorified in him. Glory, you
think? Really, Jesus? How does that work? It was looking bad for you, and now,
courtesy of Judas, the Roman government is definitely going to kill you. That’s glory? If anyone else had said this, you would have argued. But this is Jesus talking. Jesus continues, and he catches you up
short. “Little children,” he says,
“I am with you only a little longer.”
Little children? You’re an
adult; so is everyone else in the room.
Nobody’s called you a little child for a long time. But that’s what you feel like right
now: a little child, a frightened little child who will soon be separated from
the one you have come to trust, and yes, even believe in. Jesus’ next words aren’t quite what you
expected, either. His instructions
are surprisingly simple. “I give
you a new commandment, that you love one another.” Your first instinct might be to say, “Is that all,
Jesus?” You’ve been telling us all
about love all along. You’ve told
us to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Of course, that’s not exactly original to you. Loving your neighbor as yourself goes all the way back to
Leviticus.
But Jesus has more
to say to those gathered around him.
“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Just as I have loved you. We’re
in totally different territory now.
How has Jesus loved his disciples?
Jesus’ love has gone far beyond the love of neighbor. Jesus loves the disciples, his first
Twelve and all of us since, even more than he has loved himself. As Jesus will say a couple of chapters
later in John’s Gospel, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s
life for one’s friends.”
This love, this
love that goes into, through, and beyond death, is to be the defining mark of
what it means to follow Jesus. The
disciples will show they are true followers of Jesus through their love for one
another. Jesus tells them, “By
this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another.” It will be the love for
one another that will be the distinguishing mark of Jesus followers, not
knowledge of the scriptures, not adherence to the purity laws, not orthodox
belief. This idea might be painful
for some us Episcopalians, but Jesus’ followers won’t be known by meticulously
performed liturgy, either. The
world will know Jesus’ followers by their love for one another.
Let’s fast forward
nearly two millennia to the 1920s.
On May 3, 1926, The New York Times reported
on a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin, then the president of
Union Theological Seminary. Just
in case you’re wondering, he was the uncle of minister and activist William
Sloane Coffin, who lived more recently.
Dr. Coffin’s message was that love, or what he called friendliness, is
the essence of Christianity.
Friendship, he said, was the only weapon used by the betrayed Jesus to
fight the forces of evil. In Dr.
Coffin’s words: “A life was once
lived in the earth which embodied friendship. Can one not sum up pretty much the whole of Christianity in
the simple phrase—a friendly Christ revealing a friendly God and producing
friendly men and women?” It may
seem odd to us to hear of friendliness spoken of in this way. For us today, friendliness has more
lighthearted connotations and isn’t a word we would use in connection with
Christ’s self-sacrificing love. It
doesn’t seem like the appropriate word to use about Jesus, who is being
betrayed and who will eventually die; it doesn’t seem to acknowledge the
gravity of Jesus’ situation.
But love, or friendliness, can have more power than we might
imagine. Dr. Coffin has more to
say on the subject. He
writes: “Life is cruel with its
betrayals. The best are often
those most ill-used. And there is
just one weapon with which to fight, one remedy on which to rely, one tool with
which to recreate the world—an unfaltering and unceasing friendliness which
goes the length of a body broken and blood outpoured.”
Fast forward
another seventy years or so. I
heard this story more than twenty years ago, but it’s something I’ll never
forget. It was at a Lenten program
featuring four clergywomen in a panel discussion. Each woman began by giving a brief account of how she’d come
to faith. Most of the stories
contained themes I’d heard before.
One of the women grew up in a devout family, was orphaned, and then
found a surrogate family in her faith and in the church. Another came to faith after being cured
of a serious illness. The third
converted to her husband’s faith and made it her own. The fourth woman, who I’ll call Susan, had another story to
tell. Although she was at this
point an Episcopal priest, she’d grown up in England in a family that seldom if
ever went to church. She went from
primary school to high school and eventually to university, never feeling the
lack of religious affiliation or experience. But after graduation from university, things changed for
Susan. She took some time off to
travel around the country to visit friends, work at a few odd jobs, and to try
to figure out what career path might suit her. At one stop at a university town, she looked up friends of
friends in hopes of finding a free place to spend the night. The friends of friends turned out to be
part of an intentional Christian community. At first, Susan was rather put off. She didn’t know anyone who went to church,
much less committed themselves to communal living in the name of Christ. But Susan found herself quickly drawn
to this community and wanted to become part of it. Why, you might be wondering? She said, “They loved each other. I wanted so much to be a part of that love.”
They loved each
other. It sounds so simple. It was
so simple. But it was
compelling. Have you ever
encountered a group of people whom you could describe in that way? Have you ever encountered a group of
people who loved each other so much that you wanted to join them and be part of
that love? If you have, you’ve
never forgotten the experience. I
hope you may have had that experience here at St. John’s. Very few of us in human history have
had the chance to have God speak to us through a burning bush, and all those
who met Christ through Jesus of Nazareth are long gone from the earth. But you can still meet Christ through
others in a Christian community where people truly love and care for one
another.
You can meet
Christ through others right here and right now, in this very room, and later as
we gather in the parish hall. You
can also meet Christ today in the Eucharist, which we will celebrate in just a
short while. In receiving that
“body broken and blood outpoured,” we remember the one who loved others more
than he loved himself, and who commanded us to love one another as he loved
us. Amen.
