6 Easter B May 10, 2015
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Acts 10: 44-48 + 1 John 5: 1-6 + John 15: 9-17
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Today in the church it is the sixth Sunday in the season of Easter. But in society it is Mother’s Day. I’ve been especially aware of the mixed bag of both blessing and curse it is that we have this day assigned to us -when we are compelled by a profit driven society to do something God put on a stone tablet and handed off to Moses on a mountain. Honor your father and mother. That’s not always an easy thing. And it is not always easy to be the mother or the father either.
Anne Lamott says, as only she can say: I hate the way the holiday makes all non-mothers, and the daughters of dead mothers, and the mothers of dead or severely damaged children, feel the deepest kind of grief and failure. The non-mothers must sit in their churches, temples, mosques, recovery rooms and pretend to feel good about the day while they are excluded from a holiday that benefits no one but Hallmark and See’s.
And so for those of us who gather here today with hearts that are broken or breaking, with hearts that are healing or whole, may God’s rich mercies be balm and peace.
This year in particular, my heart has found a dwelling place with those who grieve for their mothers on this day. For our Katy and her siblings, for our Jindak and her siblings, and for my own mother, it is their first mother’s day without their mothers.
One of my favorite photos of my grandmother was taken on her 80th birthday. She is seated alone on an outdoor bench with her hand resting on the vacant seat beside her. With the ear of my heart I can hear her invitation: “Come and sit here with me for awhile.” It was an invitation she offered often to me and later to my own children. I knew that it meant we would have time to talk about what was on our minds or read a book together or tell tall tales.
Come and sit here with me for awhile.
In our reading from John’s Gospel today, Jesus invites his followers to abide in his love. The word Jesus speaks as abide means to sojourn or tarry or lodge. It is an invitation to come and sit with Jesus for awhile. And not just to sit for no purpose other than idleness. Not just to visit for a few minutes. But to dwell and tarry and rest in love. The writer of John’s Gospel said that the sign that we are abiding in Christ, the sign that we are sojourning with him, walking with him, resting with him, lodging with him….that sign is love. The entire arc of John’s writing seems to move toward this commandment: that we love one another as Christ has loved us. [1]
Love is what underlies everything that Jesus does and everything that Jesus teaches and everything that Jesus died for. Love, not just for us, but for all people and for all Creation. Love for the beautiful and for the broken. Love for the easy to love and love for the hard to love. Love for the insiders and the outsiders. Jesus especially loved the outsiders. He chose them, every single time. He chose them to eat with and talk with and use as examples of how everyone is to be in the world. We insiders forget this. But Jesus chose the outsiders as a reminder to us of how wide and how deep his love is. A love that encompasses all people. A love that becomes the sign of our life in Christ.
In the reading from Acts today Peter is speaking to the outsiders. Peter and the other insiders were astonished, we are told, that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. The Gentiles were the outsiders. And yet, for some unimaginable reason, the story says that the Holy Spirit fell upon them as well. And Peter responds by asking the question that frames the meaning of this reading: “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” The love of Jesus Christ, the love of the Gospel, is a radically inclusive love. And that is good news for everyone….but is often received as hard news for those of us already on the inside.
Something that might be helpful to us as we think about abiding in love is to recognize and understand the difference between love as a feeling and love as an action. Love as a feeling is arbitrary. It comes and it goes. Anyone who has any sort of relationship with anyone else knows this. A survey of couples married for longer than fifty years yields many stories of navigating through tough times because when the warm, fuzzy feelings of love were overcome by the realities of life, these couples remembered to love in action. To treat one another with respect; to show love in what they did as well as in what they said.
And this is something of what Jesus was saying to his followers, and to us. The love we show to one another is known in laying down one’s life for one’s friends. In the case of Jesus, this was a literal giving up of his life – a death. But for us, this laying down of our lives means to lay them aside. To consider the other person. To consider our friends and our neighbors and to set aside our own desires and needs to act for them.
Jesus goes on to note that his followers are his friends because they understand everything he is doing. What Jesus is saying to them is that they know why he showed a preference for the outcast and the stranger and the hungry and the poor and the widow and the orphan. And because of that, they will lay aside their lives for them as well.
It’s one thing to lay aside my life for someone I love….for my spouse or my children or my mother. But it’s another thing entirely for us to lay aside our own wants and desires for those Jesus calls us to love and care for as he loved and cared for them. In that case, abiding in love, sojourning with Christ, means that we love in speech AND in action. That we work for justice for the oppressed. That we feed the hungry. That we clothe the naked. That we provide homes for the homeless. It means that we lay down our own lives….that we set aside our own wants and desires and wishes….and we abide in the love of Christ when we love one another….all of the one another’s.
This is not how the world calls us to love. Hallmark doesn’t call us to sacrificial love for anyone outside of our own circle. There are no greeting cards or holidays that are “Work on Behalf of the Oppressed Day.” And so society shapes us to only love in easy ways. But the Gospel shapes us and calls us to the hard work of Jesus love.
We might lament this hard call of the Gospel. We might think it is unfair or that it asks too much of us. We might wonder why Jesus couldn’t just call us to easy love….to love that is just between us….me and Jesus. Why involve the outsiders? Why send us among the oppressed? The hungry and the homeless…why are they our concern?
Biblical scholars say that the key verse to this Gospel text is verse 11. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
Sisters and brothers, our joy in the Lord comes from abiding in active love. It comes from being so drawn to the love of God in Christ Jesus that in our tarrying with him we are strengthened and sent out for the work that will bring us the most joy even as it brings joy to others. That is what we are called to do. Can you imagine it….maybe sitting beside Jesus as we might sit beside a beloved mother or grandmother or friend and hearing him say to us “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” How will we respond?
Amen.
[1] For this language of the arc of John’s writing I am indebted to Susan Palo Cherwien in Christian Century.