May 6, 2007 – The Fifth Sunday of Easter
John 13:31-35
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Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable unto you Lord. Amen.
The longest sermon ever on record was only a little over 60 hours. So today I am going to try to beat that. Ok, not really, nor am I going to try to beat the shortest sermon which was one simple word, “Love”. Can you imagine if I stood up here today at just said that one simple word, “love”. There is the good chance that I would not actually pass my internship and yet others in the congregation would probably be very excited that my sermon was so short. I am sure all of those filling out the sermon feedback forms would know exactly what the main idea was of the sermon; if I began and ended it with one word, love.
Love, only four letters long, yet no one can really define what it means. Shakespeare wrote over 150 sonnets trying to capture the essence of what love is. Hallmark Company has written thousands of cards expressing what it means to love someone, to be in love, or to feel loved. People spend their life trying to figure out what four little letters mean. If you Google the number of songs bout love you will get 103,000,00 websites. I am sure if we all spend a minute thinking about the songs we know about love we each could come up with a list of at least ten. So what is it about this four letter word that causes so many people to devote countless hours trying to figure out who is in love, what it means to love, how you love, how you know you are in love, or even where to find love.
Four little letters, so simple in theory, yet so hard for us to understand. Even when you look up love in the dictionary there are 21 possibilities for what love could mean. Yet, when we look at the dictionary for the world agape, which is the Greek word used for love in this text, we only have 6 definitions to choose from. Two of those are about being open wide or agape. And then the next four are about agape love, the love God has for all of God’s creation and also the love Christians have for other persons, corresponding to the love of God for humankind.
The last half of this Gospel lesson for us today is a probably something we have heard dozens of time both here in Church and also from our families. We know these three little words, this new commandment Jesus has given to the disciples and to us; Love one another. Jesus boils down all the teachings of the Bible into three simple words, “love one another.” Yet, somewhere in translation what Jesus means gets lost. Right before this passage Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, he gets down on the ground, wraps a towel around his waist and washes the disciples feet. He humbles himself so that he might be an example of what it means to love as a servant. If we have any doubt as to what Jesus is meaning in these three words we need only to look at what he just did for the disciples. We only need to look at a couple of verses ahead of this Gospel passage for today. Jesus has already given us all the examples we need to understand how to love.
This Gospel lesson for today is not just about how Jesus loved, but instead it is about how we are to love. Jesus has called us love all of those within our communities, and not just the community here at Advent. We are called to love all of our brothers and sisters in Christ, not just the ones that we like. This new commandment from Jesus is open ended. It has no restriction on how to do it or who not to give love to. Instead, it is Jesus telling us to love. It is Jesus commanding us to love all, not for our sake or even for their sake, but instead to love so they will know we are Christ’s disciples. We are to love so people will look at us and say, “There is something different about how they are living. There is something about them and I want to know what it is.” We are called not to love in a new way, but instead called to love in an open way. And sometimes this is where we get hung up.
We don’t want to love everyone we come in contact with. Some people make us mad, and sometimes loving is just plain hard. We know we are suppose to do, most of us get that, we understand that, but it is putting it into practice, which is hard. In today’s society often those who are mean or have committed hateful acts are the ones we see in the media around us. Society is tells us that being mean is ok and making fun of others is acceptable. Television shows have become cruder and the celebrities we watch will make a hateful comment full of prejudice and it is plastered all over the media. And it is no wonder why bullying is at an all time high in this country. It is also no wonder why most people often have a hard time helping their neighbors. Or even why most people have no idea who their neighbors even are. We live in a society that tells us to protect ourselves and strive to the best in your field, your class, in society.
It is hard sometimes in our lives to look around at the people who surround us and love them. Love is not an easy thing to do, and yet as the Beatles said, it is all we need. So what do we do, when we have this calling from Jesus, this new commandment to love one another just as Jesus has loved us? Do we completely ignore this commandment and say, well that one really does not apply to me or even that it is too hard so I can just comply with the other commandments? No, we really shouldn’t do either. While we might be think it is impossible to love someone, it is not impossible to care for them, it is not impossible to help them. Yes, it might seem to be hard to wholly and completely love them, but you can do more than how most of us treat others we are not too fond of. Jesus has shown us over and over again how we can love. Jesus has shown us numerous times how we are suppose to love. The great thing is that because of being born again into Christ’s image through our baptisms we are given the opportunity to love as Christ has loved. Loving our brothers and sisters in Christ is not something we should shy away from, we are capable of loving all of those around if we remember what is said in Galatians Chapter 2 verse 20, “it is no longer I who live, but is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
If we allow Christ to live in us and through us we will not have any problem loving all of our brothers and sisters in Christ. So maybe the one preacher who gave the one word sermon wasn’t too far off on what this whole Gospel text is about. It is all about love, something we all need to give freely and to allow others to share their love with us. Jesus commanded the disciples to live differently in this world just as Jesus is calling us to do today. We are called to live in this world differently, we are called to love one another just as Jesus has loved each of us, unconditionally. Four little letters with so much meaning and depth yet, it is what this whole Gospel lesson is about, love. With this one word Jesus has given us all a new commandment to love one another. So maybe I should have just stood up here and said, “Love” afterall isn’t that what we need to be reminded of sometimes? That we are loved by God unconditionally and we too should love one another? Amen.
