ONE LOVE A Sermon for Sunday, May 12, 2013 by Avena A. Ward St. Pauls United Church of Christ Chicago, Illinois Text: John 17:20-26 I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. Sermon: Gosh, I really enjoy living today. One of the things I like most is how we can find connections to almost everything on the Internet. I like that almost any question I think of I can develop a search and follow the path to an answer. As I was reading the gospel passage for today Bob Marley s song One Love popped into my head. A few keystrokes and I was listening to it on YouTube. In another tab I pulled up the lyrics to read along: One Love, One heart, Let s get together and feel alright. Hear the children crying, Hear the children crying, Saying, give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel alright. Here we are in this beautiful sanctuary full of children, hearing them -- some crying, yes, and others singing and giving thanks and praising the Lord -- don t you feel alright? But following the lyrics a little further, that s not where the song leaves us. There s a place in Bob Marley s One Love, where those gentle rocking reggae feel-good challenge us with a
difficult question: Is there a place for the hopeless sinner who has hurt all mankind just to save his own beliefs? That disturbing question turned me around and pointed at some of the things that feel like jagged and broken edges in our world. While the news coverage is turning away from 24 hr coverage of the Boston bombings, I felt that question calling us to look at some things about our faith that don t always feel alright. With those words I was transported in my imagination to a very dark place, where hiding under that boat cover, surrounded by police, with guns trained on him, someone s child was huddled, shivering and in pain. I wondered, could he have been praying? Was he asking that question in his anguished hours before his capture? Our gospel reading for this morning finds Jesus in prayer, even as he was waiting for the authorities who would come and arrest him. Jesus hadn t done anything. We believe he was innocent. But that young man huddled in the boat in a Boston backyard, we re already convinced was not innocent. During the manhunt alone he d hurt many people. Without a trial we believe it was that young man in the boat who hurt Celeste and Sydney Corcoran, mother and daughter, with the bomb that he dropped at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. When NPR interviewed the pair this last week Celeste, the mother, was recovering from losing both her legs. She was with Sydney, her daughter, who was in good health, but who almost bled to death from a shrapnel wound to her leg. Celeste and Sydney were leaving the hospital when they were interviewed, moving to a rehab center for the next steps in their recovery. Celeste was just climbing out of the depths. She had almost given up on life at least three times already. But people wouldn t leave her alone.her family and even strangers kept urging her on. Recent visitors included two marines, each with amputations of their own. They stopped by to tell their storiesof what they ve been able to accomplish even with their injuries. They wanted to show Celeste that she wouldn t always be an invalid. But for Celeste, it had felt like she was buried in the dung heap of misfortune. For her, that new life could come fast enough. It was hardly a reality. She was still coping with the pain of what had happened to her. Hope was a seed that hadn t even germinated yet. But hope sometimes finds fertile soil in devastation. I saw that while traveling on the island of Crete 35 years ago.crete was a major battleground in World War II. When I visited in 1979 the landscape was still dotted with shells of buildings with no windows and no roofs. The space inside those building has now become overgrown with weeds, even trees.
Flocks of sheep and goats roam wild in the countryside. They live off the sparse vegetation and scavenge in the garbage outside of people s homes. And then they shelter in those abandoned buildings at night. What I noticed as I hiked around the island was that also dotted around the countryside, both inside those buildings and in the rubble outside there were cucumber vines and tomato bushes springing up. Fig trees grow in the most unlikely places. They ve grown up, I realized after being pooped out by those goats and sheep. Sometimes life asserts itself in spite of or in the midst of refuse and ruin. And love shows up more vividly against such a backdrop. On the night of his betrayal and arrest Jesus was in trouble. And so he was praying. He was praying that his work might not be in vain. He was praying, not just for those his closest friends whom he would leave behind, vulnerable. But, if we listen closely, we can hear that Jesus praying for us, as well. I ask not only on behalf of these [my disciples], but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word,... that they may all be one.... as we are one, I in them and you in me,... so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me... This gospel reading comes to us out of context, after we ve walked through Lent and re-read the passion stories. After Easter and the resurrection, it takes us back to the night he was betrayed. Even after Jesus has ascended into heaven it returns us to Jesus in the midst of deep crisis. And it is addressed to God for us especially when we find ourselves deep in the crises of our lives. We have these verses to remind us that Jesus fervent prayer at a time like that was that his disciples and we might be given strength and courage to carry on as his body in the world. He prays that we should know Jesus loves us, and through the mystery of the indwelling Trinity, God does too. This is the kind of love that we have just baptized our children into, right? This is a transforming love. A love that can make all things new. But it can leave us struggling with more questions than it answers. Questions like those that popped into my head as I was imagining what the world would look like if we took Jesus prayer to heart. I like to think that if Jesus prayer were answered, by those of us who ve been baptized into Jesus baptism and taken on being his body, if we were to really feel and act as if we were One, and to have that be the truth of our lives, there would be no bombings in Boston. Or Syria or Afghanistan. There would be no people still
living in tent cities in Haiti so many years after the devastating earthquakes. There would be no school shootings and no violence between gangs on the West side or the South side. There would be fewer people pushed out of homes and jobs and mental institutions... Here s the uncomfortable question that bugged me: If we re the answer to Jesus prayer and have taken on loving as God has loved us, why is there still tragedy and death in the world? Matt said last Sunday that God s peace is a mystery, that sometimes we only know it when we see it. Well, this One unifying Love is a mystery, too. Like God s peace, we only occasionally get glimpses of it in action. When we do it is often in flashes of light, reflecting off shards of broken glass. It it is in tendrils of vines growing from the dung in refuse heaps. It is in the lives of people who ve been torn apart and put back together again after tragic and difficult events. Celeste -- that mother who lost both her legs in the Boston bombing, she says she s ready to believe now that in time, with prostheses she will be able to resume her role of caring for her family. In his time among us, Jesus prayed to God for us that we would come to trust in God who would not let even death stand between us and her love. God so loved the world that God became human and dwelt among us as the Light of the World. And those who follow Jesus are called to carry that light in the world. But do we have to carry the light to that young man hiding in the boat? Do we have to acknowledge our one-ness with him as well? Jesus said: Love your enemies. Love them and pray for them, even if they hurt you. That s the kind of love we ve just baptized these three children into. It s a demanding love and it doesn t always leave us feeling alright. In real life it leaves us with some uncomfortable questions, and some difficult decisions to make. When the NPR reporter interviewed Celeste and Sydney, the mother and daughter victims of the Marathon bombing, he asked how they thought that boy in the boat should be judged. Did he deserve the death penalty? If that s what a judge and jury decides. That s what Celester, the mother, said. No, not death, said the daughter. He should live long and have plenty of time to contemplate the harm he has done. Which is the right answer? Jesus urged us to leave the judgement to God. The mandate he left for us in his prayer is to love. To love with the kind of love of a mother for an only child. To love with a love that gives life to seeds of hope, even seeds found buried in the dung heap.
If we re going to love like Jesus taught us, it s never going to be easy to know the answers. We re going to be confronted and challenged to live that love. But for now, along with our children who have sung so beautifully of Jesus love, let s praise and thank the Lord and then we ll feel alright. Amen.