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.
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