Joel D. Kline
May 9, 2004
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
In a recent issue of Sojourners magazine, editor Jim Wallis writes about attending a memorial service for Rose Harding at Iliff School of Theology, where her husband Vincent has long taught. A tireless worker for civil rights, Rose’s lengthy memorial service transformed into what Wallis labels “a camp meeting, with testimonies that simply couldn’t be stopped.” Writes Wallis,
The most common words of the four-hour service were, “I thought I was the only one.” So many felt the love of this woman, yet each one felt they were special to her. They were. Rose had a way of making everyone feel that they were the only one.
This morning’s Gospel lesson from John, chapter thirteen, carries a simple message, as Jesus speaks to the disciples on the eve of his arrest and crucifixion. “I give you a new commandment,” says Jesus, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (13:35).
Taken simply at face value, these words of Jesus can be easily sentimentalized, reduced to “feel good” words that suggest a warm and soft experience of love. But when we recognize the context in which Jesus shares this commandment, it becomes clear that Jesus is speaking of a demanding kind of love, a love that propels us to give from the very center of who we are. It’s a love much like that of Rose Harding, who so gave of herself that others were made to feel special in her presence.
Jesus shares this command immediately after Judas’ departure from the table at the Last Supper, as he readies to betray Jesus, and immediately before Peter’s impulsive and hollow promise that he will lay down his life for Jesus, a promise followed by denial of Jesus. Asserts New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, “Like a warm fire glowing all the brighter as the wind starts to howl and the snow to fall, Jesus’ parting promise and commandment sparkle out against the dark backcloth of betrayal and disloyalty.”
The kind of love Jesus urges upon us is not a tit-for-tat, not an “I’ll-scratch-your-back, you-scratch-mine” kind of thing. Instead, it is a challenge to embrace a whole new way of living and relating. Jim Wallis speaks of his friend and mentor Rose Harding as having “a heart so big it would have healed the world if it could. The truth is, she healed more of it and more of us than she ever knew.”
We too are called to be a healing presence in the world, to enflesh and embody the incredible love and compassion of God in our daily encounters and relationships—in our families, among our significant friendships, within the faith community, and in relationships beyond. On that dark night of betrayal and infidelity, Jesus lit a fire, soon embraced in the aftermath of the resurrection by the very disciples who had been cowering in fear behind locked doors. Yet today, can we not encounter the same transforming fire, a fire that prods us to take on this new way of living, seeking to love one another as Christ loves us?
Writing in The New Interpreter’s Bible, seminary professor Gail R. O’Day reminds us that
The love to which Jesus summons the community of faith is not the giving up of one’s life, but the giving away of one’s life. The distinction between these prepositions is important, because the love Jesus embodies is grace, not sacrifice. Jesus gave his life to his disciples as an expression of the fullness of his relationship with God and of God’s love for the world. Jesus’ death in love, therefore, was not an act of self-denial, but an act of fullness, of living out his life and identity fully, even when that living would ultimately lead to death ….
To love one another as Jesus loves us is to live a life thoroughly shaped by a love that knows no limits, by a love whose expression brings the believer closer into relationship with God, with Jesus, and with one another. It is to live a love that carries with it a whole new concept of the possibilities of community.
William Willimon tells the story of a struggling and declining inner-city church that made the decision to become more intentional about reaching out into the surrounding community. The members decided they needed to make contact with neighbors, so went door to door sharing small sacks, each containing four donuts, a prayer of blessing for the neighbor, and information about the church and its services. A few weeks into the project, an elderly man showed up for Sunday morning worship. At the sharing time, the visitor stood and said,
I guess I haven’t been in a church in 30 years, maybe longer. I’ve been having a tough time of late. I just barely get by on my Social Security. Last week, I only had enough money for my medicine, nothing for food. I went downtown, bought my pills, and had nothing left. I had been sitting in my apartment all day, with nothing to eat, and no possibility of anything to eat until my check came at the end of the week. Then some of your people knocked on my door. You handed me that sack of donuts. It was literally food for a starving man. Those donuts were as much love and concern as I have seen in a long, long time. I’m here to say thank you. I’d like to be a part of a group of people like you, if this is the sort of thing that you do for other people. Thanks.
Love is not mere sentiment; love is action. Love is reaching out. Love is making waves in the world around us, living and relating in such a way that we point to the One who has a heart so big that it would heal the world. Are we ready to make waves, to love as Jesus loves, to go the extra mile in relationships, to embrace the things that make for peace, to allow ourselves to be shaped by a love that knows no limits?
This is our challenge, this is our mission and calling, and this is our privilege as we make waves as followers of Jesus. May God guide us as we seek to love as Christ Jesus first loves us. Amen.
Lord God, Source of every good gift, fill our hearts with gratitude this day for the gift of relationships—the gift of families, the gift of friendship, the gift of life in this church community, the gift of relationship with you, O God.
On this day when the society around us is celebrating Mothers’ Day, we join in expressing thanksgiving as we consider mothers who have embraced the raising of children as a calling, those who give of themselves in a host of often unnoticed ways so that their children might blossom and grow.
At the same time, O God, we acknowledge that for some, Mothers’ Day is hard. There are some who are grieving because their relationship with their mother or with their children is broken; others grieve the loss of one who has long nurtured them, while still others here may yearn to become a mother, but the opportunity has not been theirs.
God, listen to your children praying for those who hearts this day are glad, and for those whose hearts this day are heavy. We pray as well for those who know both disappointment and joy, both pain and promise.
God, listen to us now as we pray that your healing mercies might strengthen and encourage and uphold those who are hospitalized and are struggling with health issues….
Loving God, listen to us as we pray for peace in our broken world, as we seek your healing and forgiveness for the atrocities of warfare, and as the story of Iraqi prisoners being abused and mistreated unfolds before us in the news media. God, listen to our yearnings and our prayers, our hunger and our thirst, for the coming of that time when nations beat their swords into plowshares and their weapons into instruments of healing and wholeness.
Hear us now, holy God, as we offer ourselves—our hearts, our minds, our energy, our prayers, our time—for the ministry of your unfolding realm of grace and compassion and peace and hope. Lord God, send us love, send us power, send us grace! Amen.