Easter 5C
April 24, 2016
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35
This week in
confirmation class, I left a few minutes at the end of class for us to play a
little game I like to call, “Stump the Pastor.” That is, I let the kids ask
anything they want about faith, the Bible, or anything else we had talked about
in class, and see if they could stump me. One student said, “Our main
commandment as Christians is to love each, right?” He was referring, of course,
to the Gospel text we hear today, in which Jesus, after washing his disciples’
feet on the night of his betrayal, tells his disciples, “I give you a new
commandment, that you love one another… just as I have loved you.” Yes, I said,
that’s what Jesus tells us. “If that’s the case,” he went on, “Then how do so
many Christians justify persecuting people of other religions.” “Great
question!” I said, enthusiastically, then, “Next question?” He did it. He
stumped me!
Now, of
course I tried to come up with some sort of answer, but who knows if it was
satisfying at all – the truth is, I didn’t know how to answer it. Since then,
though, I have continued to think about it. I thought about it in terms of a
bumper sticker I saw in the parking lot when I went to vote in the primary this
week that said simply, “Every person matters.” I thought about it in terms of
the very election I voted in, as I thought about how well the different
candidates for president fulfill that most important commandment from Jesus. I
even thought about it in more mundane ways, when things people did this week
annoyed me. How is it, I thought, that the commandment that Jesus left with his
disciples on his last night on earth, to love one another, is so very hard for
us to fulfill? What is so hard about loving one another?
Of course,
love isn’t always hard. Sometimes it is a joy! At least once a day, Michael and
I listen to our beautiful daughter being her chatty self and say to each other,
“I love her so much!” I talk to my parents at least once a week and we always finish
the phone call by telling each other, “I love you.” We even tell Klaus, our
devoted Dachshund, that we love him! Loving is easy when we are loved back, or
when we really like something or someone, or when there is no risk, or when it
doesn’t require us to get too far out of ourselves.
Loving is
less easy when we are appalled by a person, when someone has hurt us, or when
Sometimes we
express our Christian love simply by praying for someone. How many of you here
pray for yourselves sometimes? How many pray for your loved ones? How many pray
for people in need around the world? How many of you pray regularly for your
enemies? How many of you pray for the presidential candidates of the opposite
party? How many of you pray for people who have hurt you during the course of
your day – not for vengeance, but for their well-being? I heard of a poll recently that asked people what they pray for. Not surprisingly, the largest
area for prayer was for
If praying
for those we consider our enemies is hard, loving them is even harder. Loving
people who are different, who believe something different, especially if that
something different is at odds with what we ourselves believe – it may be
Jesus’ most important commandment, but it also can be the hardest thing he asks
us to do.
And yet, I
wonder if this seemingly simple command, to love one another, is what might
start to bring about that new heaven and new earth that John talks about in our
reading from Revelation. The book of Revelation is often thought to describe
the end of the world, though John uses so much symbolism, it is perhaps
dishonest to take it all literally. But all the strange creatures and symbolism
aside, this vision we hear about at the end of the book, the vision of a new
heaven and earth in which there will be no more crying or pain, death or
mourning – that is a vision of pure hope. It is the reality that we long for,
the reality we cling to in this faith. It is a vision of peace and harmony and –
dare I say – love. Is it possible that we could catch a glimpse of this new
reality, even today?
Suzanne
Guthrie tells a story about how that might look: “Not long ago,” she writes, “I was driving
to a meeting in an unfamiliar town on a rainy Saturday morning. I stopped at a
red light and noticed some kind of protest happening on the street corner – a
group of people wearing sandwich boards with huge lettering. Some signs said,
‘Stop Abortion,’ while others read, ‘Pro-choice’ – both interspersed with harsher
messages. These passionately opposing individuals stood amidst one
Two opposing groups, both driven by their
deeply held beliefs, both driven by their love for the group of people they
believe they are protecting. But their love for these groups – in one case, for
unborn children, and in the other, for the autonomy of pregnant women – did not
keep them from also loving each other. Two people, wearing opposing signs,
embrace one another – Ms. Guthrie likens this to the new heaven and new earth
described in Revelation. She writes, “Here is the holy city adorned as a bride
for her husband. A new heaven, a new earth, breaking forth through the rain,
hidden as a sign on the street corner. See how they love one another
passionately enough to embrace this moment of reconciliation and still more
passionately to continue their opposing struggles on behalf of others.”
You don’t
have to agree with someone to love them, see? You don’t even really have to
like someone to love them with Christian love. You remember that Jesus offers
this new commandment on the night he was betrayed, denied, and deserted by his
best friends – I’m betting he wasn’t too pleased with them that night, and yet
he never ceases to love them, and indeed expresses in word and deed the most
humbly radical sort of love. So it seems, loving someone as Jesus loves us doesn’t mean liking or
approving of their actions. But it does mean seeing them as children of God who
are worthy of God’s love, children of God for whom Jesus died and rose again,
for whom God through Christ conquered death so that we all could live with God
in eternal life. To love one another with this love is more powerful than
disagreement, more powerful than disappointment, more powerful than the
difficulty of forgiveness. Indeed to love someone with God’s love is more
powerful than anything else on this earth.
Let
us pray… Loving God, you bid us to love
one another as you love us, but in our human brokenness, we often find this
difficult. Give us courage to love those we find unlovable, to see each person
as a child of God who is worthy of love. In the name of the Father and the Son
and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Your homework assignment: pray this week for the presidential candidate you dislike the most. Pray for their health, for their families, that they would find time to rest during this crazy time, and that they, too, would search their hearts and find a way to love even people they don't really like or are scared of.
Your homework assignment: pray this week for the presidential candidate you dislike the most. Pray for their health, for their families, that they would find time to rest during this crazy time, and that they, too, would search their hearts and find a way to love even people they don't really like or are scared of.
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