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Easter 5C
May 15, 2022
John 13:31-35
INTRODUCTION
Here is something quirky about the lectionary, the predetermined readings for any given Sunday: today’s Gospel, in the middle of the Easter season, takes us back to Maundy Thursday. The exchange we hear today is at the beginning of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse, and happens right after Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, and before they all head out to garden, where Judas will lead a group of soldiers to arrest Jesus. So, some chronological whiplash going on! We won’t hear about the foot-washing today, but we will hear the “new commandment, to love one another as [Jesus] has loved you.” How does that land differently during Holy Week than it does now, as we still celebrate the resurrection?
This somewhat strange story from Acts dovetails nicely with that commandment. To this point in Acts, Peter’s ministry has been to Jewish communities who have become followers of Christ, rather than to Gentiles. Remember, Jews had a stringent set of dietary and other laws (circumcision, for example) that they followed in order to set them apart as God’s chosen people. Gentiles did not follow those rules, and so until now, they had not been a part of the Christian community. But this vision Peter will describe, which he says happens three times, blows apart the idea that Gentiles are not included in God’s chosen people. Just as no food is excluded, so also are no people excluded from God’s love.
In truth, these are a couple of radical texts for today! Add to that John of Patmos’s revelation in our second reading of a new heaven and a new earth in which “death with be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away,” and wow! There is lots of hope to be had this day! I’m grateful you are here for it. As you listen, hear that hope offered also for you: hope of acceptance, and love, and restoration, no matter what you are facing. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Grace to you and peace from our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
In the exchange we overhear from John’s Gospel today, we get a chance to hear in essence Jesus’ deathbed request of his disciples. 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 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 being wounded by loss, or being hurt, or 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. Yet another reason: some people are just mean, or evil. They manipulate us, harm us, or they walk into a Tops and start shooting black people. It is especially hard to love someone like that!
And yet, Jesus’ commandment is not, “Love a select few,” or, “Love when it isn’t too much trouble.” 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?
So let’s bring this commandment into a more concrete context. We all have people in our lives whom we find it especially difficult to love, right? It might be someone very close to you – a family member, perhaps, or someone you have to see every day at work. Or maybe, the place you find it most difficult to love one another is when you consume the news, and you find your heart filled not with love but with anger and disdain for a politician or group. I know how easy it is just to give in to those feelings of what we feel is justified anger and disdain. After all - those people are terrible. And yet, does Jesus love them? Did Jesus die also for them? Yup. And so how can we live into Jesus’ commandment, and love them, too?
First off, I want to clarify that loving someone is not the same as liking them, agreeing with them, or condoning their actions. Not at all. There is plenty going on in the world that must not be condoned. Loving one another sometimes looks like holding to account, and fighting for more loving action toward the vulnerable. Love isn’t always sweetness and roses and kind words. Sometimes love is speaking the truth, even the painful truth, but doing it in love. But love should never look like hatred of another person. It may be hatred of their words or actions, but not of the person themselves – for they, like you, are a person created in the image of God, a person worthy of love, a person just as dearly in need of God’s grace and forgiveness as all of us.
So with that in mind, how can we go about loving someone who is difficult to love? One faithful way to do this is simply to pray for them. And I don’t mean, pray that they would go away and not come back. I mean, pray for their well-being, that they would be open to God’s will, that they would shine God’s light in this broken world. Pray that they would know God’s love, and be transformed by it, just as we all long to be transformed by that love.
Sometimes, I know, even this prayer is too difficult, especially when it is for someone who has hurt us. In this case, when I don’t have the words, I have sometimes let my prayer be simply to visualize the person, and in my imagination to surround them with light. To imagine them surrounded in the light of Christ. This image and practice regularly softens my heart, and eventually, words may be able to accompany the image.
Another way to love someone difficult to love is to see them not for the ways they have hurt or offended us, but for the ways that they, too, struggle. As we teach our children, hurt people hurt people – that is, people who harm others are acting out of their own pain. So strive to see them as people who are as broken and searching and longing as we all are. Find compassion for that pain (not the resulting action, just the pain!). Pray for relief from that pain. Love will follow.
It’s all so much easier said than done, I know. And please know that I am preaching to myself as well today! But it is so important. Because as hard as it is, I believe that 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. In this vision we hear about at the end of the book, John describes a new heaven and earth in which there will be no more crying or pain, death or mourning. It 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?
You don’t have to agree with someone to love them. You don’t even really have to like someone to love them with Christian love. 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
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