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May
9, 2004 (Jimmie Johnson) John 13:31-35 When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------- “Honesty is not all it’s cracked up to be.” How’s that for an opening sermon line! “Honesty is not all it’s cracked up to be.” Honesty can do more harm than good if there is other motivation than love involved. And here’s another thought: not all Christian activity is that Christian. Can some of what we do in the name of service to Christ be really service to a need for approval? If last Sunday’s sermon was a theological sermon parsing the faith notion that God is not a Christian though we pray with all our hearts and minds that God make us Christians, then today’s sermon will be a pastoral care sermon whose purpose is to help us think through our faith so that we behave lovingly to one another. We all know we are commanded by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount to “love our enemies” (Matthew 5:44). We all also know Jesus commands us to “love our neighbors as ourselves” (Luke 10:27). This month I turn 57 years of age. I am still a beginner Christian, a spiritual preschooler, when it comes to practicing love for enemies or neighbors. But what’s interesting in this text from John’s gospel, (which, by the way, doesn’t have a Sermon on the Mount in it) is that Jesus’ words about loving are not about our enemies or our neighbors but about “loving one another.” In other words, his commandment here in John is very specific about loving those in our Christian fellowship. This fellowship can be our family, our church softball team, our Sunday School class, our fellow church volunteers on a church committee, a fellow officer or staff member, someone who simply sits down the pew from us on Sunday mornings, or the person who comes to worship God in this building for the very first time. It’s about the practice of love within the fellowship What’s so new about this commandment to love one another anyway? The Jewish Bible, what we call the Old Testament, has this commandment to love right as the heart of the Torah in both Leviticus ( Leviticus19:18) and Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 6:4). The idea that the Holy One commands us to love is not new. What’s so new about this idea, Jesus? What’s new is that the commandment to love derives now from the news that the Word has become flesh and dwelt among us. What’s new is what theologians mean by the word “Incarnation,” what we Christians believe in the Christmas story. The words of the Nicene Creed about Jesus-- “begotten not made... of one substance with the Father”--all that funky language is straining to communicate this Good News of God humanizing Godself through Jesus. This is what’s new! The love of God becomes flesh and blood in a way never done before: Jesus birthed through a barren womb, laid to sleep in a manger, circumcised in the Temple, Jesus baptized in the river with sinners, Jesus teaching and then living this love so that all are blessed and chosen, Jesus even loving those in this very passage who are about to betray and abandon him. All of this glad obedience on the part of Jesus infuses God’s life and love into the world in a way that we Christians claim has never happened before. And, as astounding, the new is the promise that such love of God is willing to turn each of us into a manger for this love to be born. Look, this passage is very clear. The way we relate to one another is the best indicator of what we believe. The way we relate to one another is the truest picture of the believer to God. Keeping this commandment to love one another is the identifying mark of discipleship according to John’s gospel. In John’s gospel, the commandment of Jesus is not about loving our enemy or our neighbor, but about the love within and among members of the faith community, what we call our congregation. So here’s where the importance of examining our honesty and our involvement comes in. “Honesty” in our relationships with one another without compassion and self-understanding is not honest, but subtle hostility. Remember the Bible cautions us that when we speak the truth, it should be spoken from a loving heart. “Speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Do you sometimes find that relating on occasion to church members can be like rubbing up against a porcupine? You get stuck and scratched and hurt, but you didn’t see a porcupine in the church building? This is what it feels like to relate to what is known as a “passive aggressive personality.” These are persons who believe they are honest in what they say to you or do but who are anything but truthful within themselves. Look, any good thing can be used in a hurtful or destructive way, including honesty. You see if we are being “honest” with someone but not really being in tune with our motivation, then what we are doing is not loving them but hurting them. We may act as if we are contradicting others with our opinions or beliefs to be helpful, when in reality it might be more truthful to see that we are simply wanting to feel superior. Another form of dishonest honesty is that if we criticize people about things they can’t change, we are only hurting them with our honesty so that we can feel superior. But there is another form of dishonest honesty, too. The truth is that when we open up to people and try to make amends for our past behavior, we shouldn’t do so if such folks would be better off without our confession, our honesty, our contact. What’s really the purpose of the honesty? As we grow in God’s love for us, God’s love within us, among us, we will increasingly discover more parts of ourselves that may be hurtful, parts of ourselves we were previously blind to. These may be parts of ourselves that lived within the shadows of our interior life, and we didn’t even know these feelings and thoughts and perceptions were within us. Well, in order to love one another honestly, we also have to accept lovingly these parts and persons within us, too. We shouldn’t condemn ourselves for these ongoing, un-ending discoveries of our humanness, not hide our destructive impulses from ourselves, but rather see the truth of who we are and then love ourselves so we grow toward our strength. These twisted little parts within us more than likely got that way as we unconsciously were dishonest with ourselves and banished these negative weaknesses to the shadowy basement of our lives. Every day with every true and honest self-insight, we can thank God for the Easter love which accepts such weaknesses and needs and lets them come into the light not to be condemned but known and then transformed. One secret of Christian fellowship, Christian love for one another, is to be sure our honesty is first with ourselves. This way our “honesty” won’t be tainted by dishonest motives such as the need to feel superior. The other secret of Christian fellowship has to do, I believe, with what we can call “detachment.” Do you wake up every day thinking you must fix every problem you see, save every person who is calling out, “rescue me,” meet every need you know of? Do you find yourself driven by the need to be needed? I know it sounds sub-Christian to think otherwise, but I am coming to believe that a certain amount of detachment or the setting of spiritual boundaries around oneself is a key to a daily gladness in our Christian walk. A goofy guy once said one of the wisest things I have ever heard. He said, “Jimmie, remember what my therapist told me. ‘An empty plate feeds no one.’” What if all that energy you are spending in the name of Christian service really isn’t about God’s glory? That’s a very difficult question to ask yourself but a necessary one. And when it comes to failure, can you simply get to the point where you ask God to help you see failure as being as natural an occurrence as success in the overall miraculous drama that daily human life is? Can you get to the point that your failure might better be thought of not as star billing in the universe or the featured main attraction but as merely as little cause for concern or worry as having to play the role of a loser in a summer theater production?* It’s just not that big a deal. Can you perhaps change with God’s help the way you perceive failure in the grand scheme of life? A certain amount of detachment is a gift of God’s grace. A certain amount of detachment would make us a lot more enjoyable in the Christian community called the congregation. I know that this idea of being called to detachment sounds like the opposite of loving one another, but it’s not. It is rather the mature fulfillment of such love among and with one another. How can we take failure lightly when all our lives we’ve been teaching one another and been taught that winning is everything and to accept every challenge? How can we stand back from a loved one who is anxious and in pain and messing up, still be supportive, yet not take charge or take over as if it were our problem? Such thinking sounds unworthy of a Jesus follower. But is it, really? What I am saying is that if we are to love one another, we might well need to question many of our old ideas. Maybe we were wrong to think we always had to be Prince Charming and rescue every damsel in distress. Maybe we were wrong to think we had it in us to take care of everyone in trouble. What if the news that we are not Jesus is true, that we are called to be Christ-like, yes, but to be Christ, no? And maybe our ideas that we are only and always to be winners, the very best that we can be in the face of any and every challenge—maybe such ideas really are not from God but from a compulsion within us that stands in the way of making close friendships. Honesty starts within. Detachment can enable us to be long-distance lovers rather than burned- out sprinters entering every race. May God help every one of us to lighten up! That might be the really big first step in loving one another. *Adapted from Huston Smith |
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