Sixth Sunday of Easter C

In 2010 the sixth Sunday of Easter was also mother's day. Here is a sermon that relates the dilemma of trying to raise a healthy, whole and loving child with God's desire to be in relationship with us.

The Sixth Sunday of Easter

Transcribed from a sermon given

On May 9, 2010

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Arroyo Grande, CA

John 14:23-29

It’s Mother’s Day.  You know, there is no more difficult job than being a parent.  There’s also no more rewarding job.  Let’s think about this impossible mission that we take on as parents.  We are presented with an infant, a child that is totally uncivilized.  In fact, it’s not even housebroken when we bring it home. We are confront with this helpless child that we want to raise to become a happy, productive, loving member of society.  How do you go about making this transformation in this child?  How do you get it to do and be what you want?

Well, one of the things you might call it is obedience.  Obedience is doing what you are told.  And certainly a parent does want their child to be obedient about a few things – like don’t run out in the street in front of a car, because for the safety of the child, obedience is important.  And then, of course, for the sanity of the parent sometimes obedience is appreciated.  There are several different ways to get obedience from children, or other animals, but we’ll just talk about children right now.

One way to get obedience is out of fear. That’s where a person – whether a child or an adult – does or doesn’t do certain behaviors because they are afraid of the consequences.  They are afraid of the punishment.  They are afraid they’ll get hurt.  And this can work; you can get an obedient child by fear of punishment – but it may not be the person you want that child to become, because obedience based on punishment means as soon as the one who might punish them is out of sight, when the person perceives there is no chance of getting caught, there is no reason to continue in the desired behavior..

Then there is obedience because of positive reinforcement.  I studied psychology; I know all about positive reinforcement.  If you reinforce something in a positive way, that behavior is more likely to happen again.  If you don’t reinforce the behavior, it’s less likely to happen.  I also learned all about this trying to get obedience out of my dog.  I’m not always very successful with that.  How I did with my children, you’ll have to ask them.

The idea when training a do is if the dog does what you want it to do and you give it a treat, it’s more likely to do what you ask it to do again, because something good happened.  And that happens with all of us – we all respond to not just treats, but to attention and affection and someone saying ‘good job’ and gold stars and raises in our salary.  There’s lots of different positive reinforcements that increase the likelihood of behavior.  Now as a parent, most of us parents are aware of this, but we also know it’s a little more complex than that, because it’s hard to be consistent in what you reward.

Sometimes children have certain behaviors that are annoying to the parent – let’s say a 3-year-old screaming at the top of their lungs at a high pitch.  And you don’t want to reinforce that behavior, because you don’t want that behavior to continue, so you try to ignore it.  But there’s only so long that our nervous systems can ignore such behavior, and then finally we will do something to try and stop it.  So the child then gets attention – even if it’s negative attention – which is rewarding, so they’re more likely to do it again.  It’s very complicated.

Now there is a problem with reinforcing certain behaviors and getting obedience from children. It is it’s a great way to work dogs, because you want the dog to do what you want and not think about it.  And there are certain clear behaviors you want the dog to do and not to do.  But for a human being, for a child, it’s much more complicated than that.  You really don’t want your children to grow up to be perfectly obedient.  You want them to be able to disagree with someone who tells them to do something that’s not good for them, or not good for someone else.  You want them to be able to think for themselves.

What we really want as parents is for our children to grow up with a good character; with compassion and love and joy and the ability to be selfless, and all those wonderful things that we call love.  But love is not a specific set of behaviors.  The same behavior in one situation can be loving, but in another situation, not be.  Let’s take a little child that’s learning to walk; it stumbles along and it falls down.  The parent is right there and helps it back up again, and it takes a few steps, it falls down. The parent is right there and helps it back up.

Well, that’s fine.  That is very loving on the part of the parent.  But if it becomes to the point where the child takes a couple steps, looks at the parent, smiles, falls down, raises its hands up and goes, “Pick me up,” you begin to realize that you’re reinforcing the wrong kind of behavior.  You’re getting manipulated by the child, and at some point that child has to learn to stand up on their own.  At some point that child has to figure out how to get from being on the floor to being on its feet, and do that on its own.

So there becomes a time when the child falls down that it’s not the loving thing to do to pick it up.  There is a fine line between being loving and being codependent and it’s often hard to know which side of that line you might be on.  So love is not about a specific set of behaviors that you teach people.  You do not want your children to just be robots that have been programmed to do certain things; you want them to think for themselves.  You want them to care. 

You want a model, because that is where a child learns most.  It’s not by their reinforcements, because that all goes into the unconscious.  It’s not by being told to be obedient.  Children learn to be loving, good people by the model of the people around them.  They learn love by being loved.  They learn how to care for others by having been cared for.  A wise person once said – and I don’t remember who it was – said, “Love is self-communicating.”  Love can’t be taught; it can only be caught. 

When we’re loved, we catch love – it’s contagious.  And so if we’re raising our children to be loving the most important thing is to model being loving, to model all those character traits you want to see in your child. 

This brings us to the gospel, where Jesus says to his disciples, “If you love me” – how many parents have said that to their children?  I hate to think of how many times I said that to my kids – but even Jesus said it.  “If you love me, then you will do what I’ve told you.”  What did he tell them to do?  “Love one another as I have loved you.”

That’s the commandment.  That’s how we show our love for Jesus - “Love one another as I have loved you.”  He modeled what he wanted his disciples to become.  It’s a very different relationship with God.   It’s a very different way of knowing God.  Previous to this, in the Jewish tradition, much of obedience came out of fear.  If we don’t follow the rules, God’s going to punish us, either individually or collectively, and that was the general understanding of most of the spiritual traditions of Jesus’ time.

Now of course there were the prophets who had a whole different understanding of God, so it wasn’t that simple, but basically in the old covenant, there was a set of rules that you followed out of fear. This is not what Jesus was talking about.  He was bringing something new. 

Let’s think about God as a parent – we think about God as the Father, but it’s Mother’s Day, so let’s call God the parent.  God as parent wants us as human beings to be the loving, caring beings we were designed to be. 

Well, as we were evolving and growing and learning, there were some rules set down, and people were obedient out of fear.  But that’s not all God wanted from us.  God designed us not to be automatons that follow all the rules.  He wanted us to be able to love one another, so he sent someone to model that.  He sent Christ to come into the world and to love us and to model what it means to be loving and self-sacrificing and in right relationship with God.

And he said, “If you love me, then do what I say – if you love one another – then I and my Father will dwell with you.”  Think of that!  Dwelling with God; tenting with God; living with God.  Sharing a life with God – God in Christ, God as Father, God as the Advocate Holy Spirit.  Wow!

That relationship, that right relationship with God, is what the New Jerusalem is about.  Revelation can be a very confusing book in the Bible; it’s all metaphor and image and poetic, and it’s hard to just read.

But the New Jerusalem is the new way of relating to God.  Jerusalem was seen as God’s holy city, and in the middle of Jerusalem was the temple, and the temple was the home of God.  You went to the temple to be close to God.  And there was a specific point in the temple behind all the curtains that was the locus of God’s presence on earth.  And in Revelation it says there will be a New Jerusalem that won’t have a temple. 

God will not be limited to a specific place.  The whole place is going to be suffused with God’s light and God’s love, and the people there will have an intimate relationship with God. God will be their light – they won’t need the sun, they won’t need the moon, they won’t need anything, because God will provide it all.  God will be their light – their inner light.  It is about that mystical experience of oneness with Christ and with God where we dwell together in right relationship.

Right relationship with God – that’s what peace is.  Jesus offers this peace.  He said that, “Peace be with you, not as the world offers, but I offer you my peace.”  Peace is about being in right relationship.

We sometimes think of peace as a cessation of warfare, but it’s not.  We’re not at peace with North Korea.  We are not at war with North Korea, but we certainly aren’t at peace with North Korea.  There’s nothing peaceful about the relationship. 

We are at peace with Canada.  We are in right relationship with Canada.  They come down here when they get too cold.  We go up there when we get too hot.  We play hockey and baseball with one another.  We are in right relationship with one another; we support one another; we are at peace.  To be at peace with another human being doesn’t mean that you are not fighting with them.  It means that you are in right relationship with them.  And to be at peace with God is to be in right relationship with God – to live in unity and love.

So Christ came and we have the incarnation of Christ as a human being to love us and to show us, to model for us, how God wants us to be in the world.  Not being obedient out of fear, but being loving because we have been loved. We are invited to follow the model of Christ.  “If you love me, you will do what I tell you.”  And what Christ told us is, “Love one another as I have loved you.”  Amen.

Fifth Sunday of Easter year C

Jesus said that people would know we are his followers if we have love for one another. What does that look like?

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Transcribed from a sermon given

May 2, 2010

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

John 13:31-35

There was a story about a woman who had a long day at work and was pretty tired. She’d had some difficulty with some of her coworkers. And then she came to a church meeting.  It was one of those meetings that wasn't nurturing, but rather, somewhat irritating, and it went over, so she was late and concerned about getting home to fix dinner because she was expecting someone.  When she got in her car to drive home she was not at her best. Of course that’s happens when you're in a hurry on a day like that. Someone cut her off, and then slowed down, and was driving slowly.  Naturally she was honking her horn - get moving guy.  As soon as she had an opportunity she zoomed around and passed him. She got in front of him and started going slowly herself, because he needed to learn. Right? 

When they got to a stoplight he pulled up beside her, rolled down his window and said something I can't repeat during a sermon, and she responded with a hand gesture that I also can't repeat during a sermon. When the light changed she just floored it.  She was going to show this guy that he wasn't going to treat her like that.  Next thing she knew there were these little red lights going on behind her.  The policeman pulled her over.  She said to herself, "Gee, I wasn't speeding that fast."  Well he came up to her door and he said "Lady, get out.  Put your hands up on top of the car."  He started frisking her and she said, "Officer, what have I done?  I haven't broken any laws."  He said "What do you call grand theft auto?  That's a felony."  She said "What do you mean?"  He said, "Clearly you stole this car."  She said, "Well why would you think that?"  He said "Well look.  There's a cross hanging from the rear view mirror, and on the back bumper there's a sticker that says 'Honk if you love Jesus', and clearly no Christian would behave the way you've been behaving as you've been driving." 

Jesus said, "They will know you are my followers by your love for one another."  How do we know that someone is a follower of Christ in our society right now?  Do we know because they're wearing a cross, or maybe they have cross earrings on?  These days that can be a fashion statement.  Some people just wear crosses because it's the latest fashion bling, just to look nice.  Do we go by what the bumper sticker says?  Do we go with the Episcopalian that has the sort of subtle Episcopal shield, or whatever other denomination that has a bunch of bumper stickers with political statements?  How do you know someone is a Christian?  If you listen to the TV and radio right now you would think that the way you would know someone was a Christian is by how they vote and how they feel about certain hot button issues like abortion, gay rights, or any of those various issues. 

How do you know that someone is a follower of Christ?  Jesus said that if you love one another as I have loved you, they will know that you – he was talking about the community – are my followers.  Or as the one song says, "They'll know we are Christians by our love." 

What does it mean to love as Christ loved us?  It's not a soft, warm, fuzzy feeling.  There's more to it than that.  One of the problems with English is we are not very subtle in our language sometimes, especially with the word "love".  We use the same word love to refer to our relationship with God as we do to our relationship with our cars.  We use love as erotic, excitement, and passion, and love as how we feel our children. 

In Greek, especially at the time of the New Testament, there are at least four words that are translated as love in English.  C.S. Lewis did a marvelous book called The Four Loves where he analyzed all this.  It's not too long.  It's worth taking a look at

The first one is Storge, which is affection, which is familial love.  That would be the kind of love that a parent would have for a child.  It is affectionate, warm.  The second you've heard, Philia, which is brotherly love.  The name Philadelphia actually is a Greek word that if you translate it means brotherly love.  So when they say that Philadelphia is the City of Brotherly Love, it is not because of the behavior of the people of Philadelphia; it is because that's what the name means. 

Then there's Eros.  Most of us have heard of Eros which is that passionate attraction. It's not just sexual attraction, but it has a passionate flavor to it.  Then there's Agape, Agape love, which is the word that Jesus uses in this text.  When he says that you are to love one another as I have loved you, he uses the word Agape.  It's hard to really define what Agape love is. It's not a personal love.  It's not a love that possesses.  It's not a love that is asking for anything in return.  It is the love which God has for us.  It is a love which is sacrificial, open, inclusive, and action oriented. 

When Jesus said, "They will know you are my followers if you love one another," he wasn't saying, "They'll know you are my followers if you have warm, fuzzy feelings for each other."  It has nothing to do with warm, fuzzy feelings inside.  In fact, you can have Agape love for somebody you don't have any warm, fuzzy feelings for at all.  I know you may find that it would be hard believe at this church, but you may find there might be one or two people at this church that irritate you.  That doesn't mean you can't love them.  Jesus' disciples often acted in ways that must have been very irritating to Jesus, but he loved them with an Agape love.  It was an inclusive love, an unconditional love.

This love of Christians for one another, this love within the community, has been the central mechanism for spreading Christianity.  Historians suggest that the reason Christianity spread so quickly around the Mediterranean in the early Roman world is because at that time there was no social safety net.  The only safety net you had was your family, and if you didn't have a family you were on your own.  People didn't care for each other.  It was just the nature of the society at that time, but the Christians were different. The Christian communities, when there was a plague, would take care of each other.  When there was hunger they would feed each other.  You can read about it in Acts where one of the issues is who is going to be feeding the widows and orphans.  There was this sense that we are a community together, and we take care of one another. That was extremely attractive to people of that time, to see a community that loved and cared for each other, a community where you could have slaves and slave owners coming together, where you could have people of Jewish decent and people who had been pagans, where you could have people that spoke different languages come together, share a meal, worship God, support one another, and concretely expressing their love for one another. 

This was terribly attractive - a community you would want to be a part of - because you would think, "These people have something that I want in my life."  All of us want that kind of love in our lives.  This was true throughout the centuries. When you study evangelism you find people like Augustine who went to take the Roman form of Christianity to England.  He was a monk and he and several of his monks went together. They did not go around knocking on doors.  What they did was they set up a monastery and they worshiped God, and they loved each other, and they lived pure lives, and they cared for the people around them.  The people saw who they were and their integrity, and they said, "I want to find out more about this.  I want to be part of that.  I want that in my life."  So then they began converting.  Over and over again it has been the expression of love, and commitment, and self-sacrifice that has been what has drawn people to the Christian faith. 

Jesus' command is, "Love one another as I have loved you."  Love one another with sacrificial love, agape love, unconditional love.  How are we to do that as a community?  The first thing about love, the number one thing, is showing up, because you can't express agape love from a distance.  It's about being there and being with people.  We come together in worship to support one another.  I imagine that most of you here have at least at one time in your life, when things have been really tough, when you've been hurting, and alone, have felt you needed to come to church on Sunday morning. You knew that church would nurture you and that church would be a place where you could hear music, listen to scripture, and maybe be touched by a sermon. You needed to be surrounded by a community, and to know you are not alone. 

Imagine coming to church on one of those days and you pull up in to the parking lot, and you only see two cars.  Well, you’re not quite sure what's going on.  You check your watch.  You come up to the front door and there's nobody to greet you because the greeters forgot, and you come in and you stand there. We have the organist playing and priest doing his or her best to sing, and that's it.  Nobody else is here.  There is no community to surround you. Of course all the people that weren't here had good reasons.  Some were out of town.  Some were sick.  Some had to work in their garden because it was a nice day.  Some had stayed out late the night before.  Some had had a quarrel with someone else in the church and didn't want to see them that day.  Some had been asked to do the coffee hour for just one more time, and they just refused.  They were just tired of being asked.  This time they just weren't going to do it. Let them deal for themselves.  Everybody had reasons, and it just happened that that day you really needed a church community, but by random chance, nobody was there. 

We come to church sometimes for ourselves.  We come because we need to hear God's word, and we need to be part of the worship. But we also come to church because we're part of a community, to be there for each other, and to support one another. You never really know how your presence affects someone else.  I remember one time when I had recently started back at church – I had been coming to church again for six or seven months.  It was my first Holy Week. On Maundy Thursday I had lots of difficult stuff going on in my life. I had received communion and was back in the pew. I had tears in my eyes, my head down and I was praying. Someone just touched my shoulder.  I don't know who it was, but it was a touch of love, and I felt connected, and I felt God's love through that touch.  Sometimes we can just smile at someone, and they will feel "Oh, I'm not alone."  Or we have an informal conversation after church, or over in coffee hour that just begins a relationship. Later you find out that that same person is hurting, and you already have a relationship to start with so you can reach out to them and call them.  Love starts with showing up.  Showing up at a hospital when someone is sick.  Showing up with food at someone's door when they need it.  Showing up with some care, compassion, and love.  To love one another as Christ has loved us, by giving, and being, and listening. 

Part of showing up is really listening.  I think we've all had the experience where there's been someone who really heard us, who really understood, and that was a healing thing.  It is profoundly healing, but the only way that can happen is if someone shows up not just with their body, but with their mind, and listens with their heart. 

Of course there's the other side of when the Christian community doesn't look like the community of love, when unkind things might be said in the parking lot, or when cleaning up after coffee hour, or perhaps even in the choir. 

I have a mic on, and every now and then between the services I forget to turn it off.  Someone, maybe Altar Guild, or someone from the choir comes over and says "You know, your voice is still coming out over the speakers."  I think "Oh my gosh.  What did I say?  I hope I didn't say anything bad." 

We all heard recently about the politician in England who had this wonderful encounter with the sweetest woman you could possibly imagine, and got back in the car and forgot his mic was on and said, "Oh that was a disaster.  She's such a …”  – he called her a name.  It ruined his political career.  In a community of love we hold that love all the time.  Imagine if you thought of yourself as having a live mic on all the time.  Would that change how you would speak to one another, or about one another? 

There is something about a community of love.  There's something about people who love one another, and support one another, and are there for each other when they're hurting. A community that celebrates with each other when it's wonderful and that comes together in worship, that is so attractive that people want to be part of it.  Jesus gave us one commandment, to love one another as he has loved us, and that is how we are to be known in the world.