Love One Another, As I Have Loved You (Sayings of Jesus) John 13:31-35 Sunday, April 28, 2013 The Rev. Sharon Snapp-Kolas, preaching

Transcription

1 Scripture. Prayer. Love One Another, As I Have Loved You (Sayings of Jesus) John 13:31-35 Sunday, April 28, 2013 The Rev. Sharon Snapp-Kolas, preaching Opening. In one classic Peanuts cartoon, Lucy stands with her arms folded and a resolute expression on her face. Charlie Brown pleads with her: Lucy, you must be more loving. The world needs love. Make this world a better place, Lucy, by loving someone else. At that Lucy whirls around angrily and Charlie goes flipping over backwards. Look, you blockhead, she screams. The world I love. It s people I can t stand! Judas might agree with Lucy. The context of our gospel reading today is the Last Supper. Just before Jesus gives his commandment to love one another, Judas has left the dinner table to betray Jesus. After Jesus give his teaching, he will predict Peter s triple denial of him. Jesus is surrounded by well-meaning disciples who claim to love the world, but who continually act in ways that scream, It s people I can t stand! You and I can relate. I. Glory (vv ). Neither Judas nor Peter understand Jesus definition of glory. In verses 31 & 32 Jesus speaks of his own death on the cross, of being glorified through sacrifice and humiliation. In those days, and in our present time, people do not associate glory with execution as a criminal. They do not associate glory with humiliation or servanthood or sacrifice. Glory is given to kings and military leaders and people with power. Glory is given to famous people, like Brad and Angelina, or political leaders, like Reagan or Obama, or computer whizzes, like Bill Gates or 1

2 Mark Zuckerberg. I d name some sports figures if I knew any You get the point. We glorify people who are famous or beautiful or rich or powerful. Even today, 2000 years later, no one grasps Jesus definition of glory. He tries to teach his disciples. And through the teachings handed down for centuries, he tries to teach you and me. His glory is not in anything the world has to offer. His glory is not about fame or wealth or beauty or power. His glory is about serving others washing feet, healing the sick, visiting the prisoner, serving the poor, loving the unlovable dying on a cross, for his enemies as well as for his friends. Scott Hoezee writes: Jesus words in verse 31 about his NOW being glorified are properly odd-sounding considering what had just happened in the fact that Judas had fled the upper room to go forward with his dirty business. How strange that upon predicting his betrayal and upon seeing his betrayer exit the room that Jesus feels somehow glorified. No mother would claim that her parenthood had been fulfilled upon seeing her son get arrested for cocaine possession. No politician would declare victory upon seeing his country attacked by terrorists. Yet Jesus sees the specter of betrayal and loss and diminishment and so much else that is dire and yet feels glorified. Even in the glow of Eastertide we in the Church do well to remember what the true nature of glory is for us. We in the Church are not glorified when we amass political clout, business influence, or power and glitz as the world reckons those things. The nature of our glory lies elsewhere in sacrificial love, in service, and, yes, even in laying down our lives for the sake of the kingdom if it comes to that. 2

3 The idea is simple. Jesus comes to us as a servant-king. He shows us, by his actions, and he teaches us, with his words. We are to be like him. Our goal in life, as Christians, is to lose ourselves in service to others, because that s what Jesus did. Because he first served us, we are to serve others. We are to turn a blind eye to the glory-seeking of the world, because that s what Jesus did. This is so counter to the way we operate as human beings. We are constantly seeking acclaim and affirmation, through awards and accolades and money power. Jesus says, no, we are not to be of this world. We are to seek after loving others as he has loved us. He went to the cross for us. This is glory. This is love. A very simple lesson. But very confusing, living as we do, in a glory-seeking world. II. Little children (v. 33). Continuing through the passage, we see in verse 33 that Jesus addresses his disciples as little children. He comforts them and prepares them for the fact that he is leaving them for a time. They can t go with him now, but they will be with him again soon. John R. Claypool shares a beloved little story, about the boy who s trying to learn the Lord s Prayer, and one night as he knelt by his bed, these words came out: Our Father, who are in heaven How do you know my name? Such individualized affection will always remain a mystery to us mortals, and at the same time, let us never forget we re made in the image of that extraordinary love. And doing what Jesus did in loving each one he ever met as if there were none other in all the world is at least an ideal toward which we can reach even if it always remains utterly beyond our complete grasp. 3

4 Little children don t always know how to get along. They want things their own way. MY toy. MY mommy. MY chair. MY cookie. Everything is mine, mine, mine. Everything is about me, me, me. We teach children how to share and how to be polite and how to get along with others in a civil society. And yet, as adults, we forget these childhood lessons. Jesus knows this about us. And so he addresses us, like a gentle, compassionate mother or father. He addresses us as his little children, in need of a lesson in love. Because he won t be around to tell us for a while. He is going where we cannot go. Later we will go and be with him. But for now, we have to do the best we can to understand his teachings and to live by them. And, little children, the biggest, most important teachings is this: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. I like Nathan D. Baxter s piece entitled, What a Christian Community Can Offer a Polarized Society. In it he tells this story: I am the eldest of three very strong-willed boys. When I was growing up we had all of the fights and arguments you can imagine of rambunctious boys. Sometimes our disagreements would get so intense we would go to mother to have our righteous indignation ratified. She would often say to us, You boys go back and resolve it, but remember you are brothers. But Mom, we would reply, he took my ball; he said I was a liar. Mom, he broke the rules. But all she would say was, You boys go back and resolve it and, remember, you are brothers. It was eventually clear that what was most important to Mother was that we behave, in such a way that demonstrated our bond as brothers. This was even more important to her than our resolution (which she also expected). Baxter comments: I think this is what God says to the church. I know you have 4

5 differences, but you must struggle to resolve them as brothers and sisters. This is what I expect of you because you are my children. Jesus said it this way in the Gospel of John: By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another [John 13:35]. III. Love (vv ). Thomas H. Troeger is the Lantz Professor of Christian Communication at Yale University Divinity School. I like his interpretation of the love commandment. He translates verse 34 like this: I have loved you in order that you also love one another. I have loved you in order in order that you also love one another. Love is not something we should do. Love is embodied in Jesus. The more we align our lives with his Spirit, the more we become the love he embodies. We begin to embody that love within ourselves and within the community of the church. Jesus is the source of the love we cannot achieve on our own power. Lee Griess describes this concept beautifully in his book, Taking The Risk Out Of Dying. He writes: A number of years ago Henry Drummond wrote a classic sermon titled The Greatest Thing in the World. He concluded his sermon by suggesting that if you put a piece of iron in the presence of an electrified field, that piece of iron itself will become electrified. And in the presence of that electrical field, it is changed into a magnet. As long as it remains in contact with that field of power, it will continue to attract other pieces to itself. We are like that piece of iron. In the presence of Christ, we experience his love and take on his likeness. We are changed, electrified by the Holy Spirit, to attract others to the same love of God that we experience. 5

6 Jesus love commandment might better be described as a law of nature, or a law of the way the Spirit works, rather than as a commandment in the sense of a moral law that we should follow. I don t know about you, but whenever someone tells me I should do something, I get a pit in my stomach, like when I was five years old and my mother told me I should do something I didn t want to do, such as wear my hair like a pretty little school friend, or be nice to my sister, even when she was being mean to me. Jesus loves us into loving one another. It s not a should, it s just the way the Spirit works. The closer we get to Jesus, the more we love one another. It just happens. Now you may be thinking, Ah-ha! So, the should is in the getting closer to Jesus. We should get closer to Jesus, if we want to love one another. But Jesus does the getting closer part, too. He reaches out to us. He seeks after us. He chases after us, before we even know we need him. He dies for us, because he loves us. Yes, there are things we do in grateful response to his great love. But it s not a should. Especially in the church, we try to make everything a rule or a should. This is a spiritual temptation that we should there s that word again! It s so hard to avoid! a spiritual temptation that we want to avoid, as much as we can. Closing and Call to Prayer. John Gibbs writes about that great spiritual leader, Archbishop Desmond Tutu: In his nearly incredible report out of South Africa, No Future without Forgiveness (New York: Image Doubleday, 1999), Archbishop Desmond Tutu s cosmic context of holy love is unmistakable: There is a movement, not easily discernible, at the heart of things to reverse the awful centrifugal force of alienation, brokenness, division, hostility, and disharmony. God has set in motion a centripetal process, a moving toward the center, toward unity, harmony, 6

7 goodness, peace and justice, a process that removes barriers. Jesus says, 'And when I am lifted up from the earth I shall draw everyone to myself' as he hangs from His cross with outflung arms, thrown out to clasp all, everyone, and everything, in a cosmic embrace, so that all, everyone, everything, belongs (p. 265). Cosmic embrace, Gibbs continues. There s our answer to the sort of purity laws and taboos, even in Leviticus, that bear no gospel for man or beast. In cosmic embrace we rediscover the depth and scope of holy love. I have loved you in order that you also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Our church is struggling with a decades-long issue surrounding disagreements about music and worship styles. The struggle also has to do with power issues. It has to do with fear fear that we won t get what we think we want. Fear that we won t get what we think we need. Fear, ultimately, of death of our own death, of the death of our way of being, of the death of the church as we know it; and the fear that our traditions will die with us. I don t have a simple, easy answer to this decades-long struggle. I ve been here for close to three years now, which isn t long in a church with a 100-year history. Still, in the short time I ve been your pastor, I have come to love you. I am committed to being with you and continuing to get to know you better over a long, fruitful, caring relationship as pastor and people. I know and trust that, the more we seek Jesus as a congregation, the more we will become like him. The more we become like Jesus, the more we will love each other, because to love Jesus is to love others; to be like him is to become Love-in-the-flesh. 7

8 In-the-flesh-Love for us, right now, means deep, continual, ongoing prayer for our church; prayer for me as your Pastor; prayer for the lay leadership you have chosen; prayer for the next steps in our ministry together as a church family; prayer for our mission field the people who aren t here yet. The people envisioned by God who are meant to be here soon. I thought about giving you prayer homework specific instructions on what to pray about. But I don t want to be that directive. Here s what I want to say: I call you to a season of prayer for our church. However God in Christ Jesus leads you to pray, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I call you to pray. And I call you to pray hard. And I call you to pray often. For your church. For your pastor. For your community, our mission field. For the traditional worship service that is being planned for the fall. For the contemporary worship service that is being planned for the fall. And beyond all that, deeper than all that pray for a movement of the Holy Spirit in our midst like we ve never seen before. Pray that we, as a church, might embody Jesus, Love-in-theflesh. If we embody Jesus, if we draw ever closer to him, he will make it possible for us to love one another as he has loved us. I call you to a season of prayer. Amen. 8