Easter 5C
May 18, 2019
John 13:31-35
INTRODUCTION
Today, in the
midst of the Easter season, we are transported back to the night of Jesus’
betrayal, when he is in that upper room with the disciples. He has just washed
their feet, and then, immediately before today’s Gospel reading, Judas leaves
the room to go and sell Jesus out. And then Jesus will turn to his disciples
and offer to them a “new” commandment: to love one another as he has loved
them.
Before we get
to the Gospel, though, we will hear a couple other readings, one from Acts and
one from Revelation. It is useful to look at these through the lens of that new
commandment Jesus gives, because they can each show us a bit about what it
looks like to be a community that is marked by the command to love one another.
Peter’s vision helps him and us break out of the box of loving only those who
are like us, and seeking even to love and include the outsider, the one who
believes differently from us. John’s vision described in Revelation shows us
what it could look like if we were to live into Jesus’ commandment. So today as
you listen, consider what these readings might have to show us about what it
means, looks like, feels like to love one another as Jesus has loved us. Let’s
listen.
[READ]
Alleluia, Christ is Risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Grace
to you and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
It has been a
tough week at the Rehbaum house. Last weekend, my husband got the sad news that
one of his dearest friends died suddenly at age 59. So we’ve spent some energy
this week trying to process that loss. Whenever something like this happens, and
I’m sure you all have some experience with this, we spend a lot of time
thinking about last words, last exchanges. “What was the last conversation we
had?” we wonder. If those last words are really good, or really bad, or even if
they are neutral, we may spend days or even decades dwelling on them and
dissecting them and trying to fit them into our understanding of our relationship
with that person and how we left it, or how it left us.
This is perhaps especially the case
when the last exchange includes a specific request: like if your father takes
your hand and says, “You have to forgive your brother,” or your grandmother
says, “Please take good care of your mother.” These deathbed requests – we take
them seriously, right? Perhaps it is a way for us to honor our dearly departed,
or maybe there is just something about impending death that makes everything
feel more important.
Well, here in this exchange we
overhear from John’s Gospel, we get a chance to hear in essence Jesus’ deathbed
request of his disciples, the last command he gives them. And Jesus’ command
for them is not, “Pray daily,” or “read your Bible,” or, “maintain doctrinal
purity” or, “worship the right way.” No, his last command to his disciples, the
most important thing, is, “love one another as I have loved you.”
Love one another as I have loved you.
Seems pretty straightforward, right? Pretty foundational. I mean, I think we
can all agree that this is a pretty central tenet of our faith, right? And yet
somehow… it isn’t. Not that we don’t mean for it to be, but rather, because
sometimes loving each other – especially loving each other in the same radical
and self-giving way that Jesus has loved us – is really, really hard. As New
Testament scholar D.A. Carson says, “This new command is simple enough for a
toddler to memorize and appreciate, and yet it is profound enough that the
mature believers are repeatedly embarrassed at how poorly they comprehend it
and put it into practice.”
What is so hard about it? I can think
of a few things. Like, love takes a lot of work and physical and emotional
energy. It’s way easier just to be apathetic, or to not take the time or effort
to really hear someone’s pain, or to bite back when someone says or does
something hurtful. Another reason that loving someone is difficult is that it
is very vulnerable – love opens our hearts to be wounded by loss, or being
hurt, or being betrayed. If we avoid loving people too much or too deeply, we
can save ourselves a lot of heartache. If we keep our circle very small, we can
avoid a lot of pain.
And yet, Jesus’ commandment is not,
“Love a select few,” or, “Love when it isn’t too much work.” The commandment,
Jesus’ dying request, is, “Love one another as I have loved you” – that is,
genuinely, deeply, and self-sacrificially. So I think we ought to take it
seriously, right? We ought to take it so seriously that it guides not only what
we do at church, but also what we do the rest of the week: in our relationships
with family, friends and co-workers, in the ways we choose to spend our money,
in the ways we decide to vote, and how we form opinions about the biggest
ethical issues of our day. Because if our faith provides our foundation for how
we live, and this commandment is a foundational aspect of that faith, it should
be the lens through which we view everything we do, right?
To that end, I want to apply Jesus’
commandment to one of the biggest hot button issues of our day, because it has
been in the news quite a bit this week: abortion. (Yes, I’m going here!) You
may have seen in the news this week that Alabama just passed the most
restrictive abortion law of any state, which prohibits abortions after 6 weeks
gestation, with no exceptions in the case of rape or incest, and makes
performing one a felony, punished by up to 99 years in prison. On the other
hand, NY State not too long ago passed an abortion law that is extreme in the
opposite direction, allowing late term abortions! This is a hot issue with
impassioned opinions on both sides – maybe you are already feeling your blood start
to boil! If so, then good! Let’s see what Jesus’ command to love one another
has to say to this.
Let me begin by saying: I think people
on both sides of this issue would say their view is consistent with Jesus’
command to love one another. Those wanting to restrict abortions would claim
this as love for the most vulnerable humans, those who literally have no voice
and no opportunity to have one. Jesus loves the little children, we know, and
so just as Jesus loves the little children, so should we love the very littlest
children by giving them a chance at life. If we believe that Jesus calls us to
love and serve the most vulnerable among us, “the least of these,” as Matthew
25 says, then who is more vulnerable than an unborn child? Love one another, as
Jesus has loved us.
On the other hand, those wanting
access to abortions would also claim their view as an expression of love for
one another. Most opponents of strict abortion laws are supportive of access to
family planning resources and education (things that would prevent the need for
an abortion in the first place), and affordable healthcare, childcare, and aid
programs that would support low-income families who would like to have a baby
but know they cannot afford it. Opponents of Alabama’s law would also claim
love for the mother, and the particular emotional or physical anguish she may
be enduring for any number of reasons, depending upon the circumstances of the
pregnancy. They may also cite the high maternal mortality rate in this country,
the highest of any developed country by far, as well as the high number of
women who die when they undergo illegal and unsafe abortions, which increase
dramatically when the procedure is outlawed and pushed underground. Legal
abortions, this group would argue, save women’s lives. Love one another, as
Jesus has loved us.
So the question becomes: who is more
worthy or needful of our love, or Jesus’ love? Can our love be given
effectively to both unborn children and pregnant
mothers? How? What does Jesus’ love look like in this issue? What law would be
the most effective way of “loving one another as Jesus has loved us”?
I outline these differing arguments
not to convince anyone as to what Jesus would say about this issue, nor certainly
to upset anyone, but rather for two reasons. The first is simply to demonstrate
how we can as individuals apply Jesus’ command even to a hot button issue in
our current civil discourse, to help us to discern and form a faithful stance
on that issue. The second reason, is to help us to see and understand how
someone with a different opinion might also be striving to do the same thing –
so that even as we may disagree with one another, we can still respect that two
parties may be driven by the same core
belief, but come to very different conclusions. That can happen with Big
Issues like abortion, and with conflict in a congregation, and with family
scuffles: it is possible that everyone is coming from what they see as a loving
place, and doing the best they can to love and protect someone valuable and
important to them, but arriving at different conclusions. Recognizing this
probably won’t change your opinion, and it doesn’t need to, but it might just
help us to view the opposition with a bit more empathy and compassion and mercy,
to see each other’s humanity… and then, and this is really the key and the
point of my talking about this in the first place: then, it may also help us to
love that person (even the one with whom we totally disagree), just as Jesus
has loved us. In fact, I’ll betcha that Jesus totally disagrees with us
sometimes, and yet loves us still. So… can we love one another as Jesus has loved us?
We will never love one another as
long as we view each other as barbaric murderers, or as heartless, myopic monsters
(both insults I have seen this week). So we need to find a different way to
engage with those with whom we disagree. You see, you don’t need to agree with
someone to love them. Love sometimes looks like accountability, and sometimes
like genuinely listening to someone’s story without judgment, and sometimes
like praying for them and their well-being. Whatever the case, we’ll have a
much better shot at keeping Jesus’ commandment if we can remember that we all
fall short of the glory of God, we all fail miserably at Jesus’ new
commandment, and we are all utterly dependent upon God’s grace. In short, we’re
all humans, just doing the best we can.
And is that not why we come back
here, week after week, to hear that once again Jesus has forgiven our
shortcomings, and sends us out yet again to go in peace and serve the Lord? Is
that not why we come, to gather with a great cloud of witnesses who are also
flawed, but also strive daily to love one another as Jesus has loved us, and
learn from each other’s successes and failures? Is that not why we reach out
our hands each week to receive the very body and blood of Christ, and with it
the promise that we are in Christ and he is in us, and because of that we know
also that we are not in this thing alone, but are being continually sustained
and upheld by a loving God who will set us back along the right path? Is that
not why we come here and keep this faith? I know I need it!
I’m not going to tell you what to
believe about abortion – you are all smart, capable, faithful people, and I
will entrust that decision to your own prayer, study, and discernment with
Jesus. What I will tell you, is that in this season in which we celebrate that
Christ is risen indeed, we can give thanks that Jesus shows us how we too can
be brought out of the tomb of loathing and self-righteousness, the graves we
dig for ourselves when we assume the worst in the other, rather than recognize
our common humanity and flawed nature. By following Jesus’ new commandment, to
love one another, let us, too, rise from these graves and into a new life, a
life in which we view one another as worthy of Christ’s love, and so also
worthy of ours.
Let us pray… Loving Lord, in your last hours, you commanded us to love one another
as you have loved us, yet we so often fall short. Be in our hearts and our
minds with every decision we make, whether big or small, and every time we view
someone who has a view that is different from ours. And help us, when we fall
short, to remember that we always rest in your grace. In the name of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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