Love In

Love In

 

John 15:9-17
15:9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.

15:10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.

15:11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

15:12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

15:13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.

15:14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.

15:15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

15:16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.

15:17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

 

 

If Jesus were preaching this sermon in a seminary homiletics class, he would have most likely flunked it. We were taught to “nuance” our ideas and to draw the listener in to what we have to say—make them “work for it,” a bit, don’t just spoon feed the text to them, or be so obvious as to where the message is going that they would quickly lose interest, and get a jump on their daydreaming. Jesus ignores the best of homiletic training. He hits us with a firehose.

 

If you read this text and DON’T get the idea that Jesus wants us to love one another, you need to work on your comprehension skills. At least nine times in these nine verses, Jesus says something about love: as God loved HIM, so he loves us; we are challenged to “abide” in his love, just as he abides in God’s love; then love becomes a “commandment,” that we love one another as Jesus loves us; love means that we should be willing to “lay down our life for a friend.” Jesus really goes overboard on love, here. And for why?

 

I’m guessing because he really wanted us to GET it! It would be genuine, sacrificial, and “abiding” love that would distinguish the faith he was instituting from those that went before. Laws, rules, and other human trappings had distorted the earlier messages God tried to get to humanity, through priests and prophets, and several types of “Moseses.” Human intervention had weaponized the laws God meant for good, and most especially to be used to keep us at peace with one another; rules designed to create harmony among the human community had been sharpened like arrows and shot into the heart of “offenders” who clearly didn’t “respect God’s law,” at least that’s what those firing them, said. The prophetic messages meant to bring folk back toward paradise had instead penalized and paralyzed them. Honestly, things were a mess here. A “new commandment” was needed to get God’s redemption story back on track. What God intended as a great epic had become a “B” movie, quickly labeling the “good guys” from the bad. And the badly cast religious leaders had recomposed the cathartic and salvific lines of dialogue the prophets had given them into really bad writing. Jesus had to fix it, if God’s goal of bringing the human race back from the brink was to be realized.

 

Now, most of the time, Jesus and his messages would have done OK in homiletics class. Remember the parables? Good stories that elucidate on the point of the text were always winners, and Jesus had some really good stories, didn’t he? Who is my neighbor? Answer: the parable of the Good Samaritan. How does God deal with the lost? Three stories in a row: The lost sheep; the lost coin; and the lost son. What is the Kingdom of God like? Pearls of “great price,” or a giant drag net, gathering “fish” of every kind into it—more good stories. Won’t God get mad at us if we keep bugging God with our needs? Not according to the persistent “Friend at Midnight” story Jesus told. Honestly, God comes across as a pretty good character as Jesus tells it. God seems to be willing to “forgive and forget” all that we have done to putt up the creation; God will never turn the divine “back” on us; God will painstakingly pursue the “lost” among us, and not write us off; and like a “good friend,” God will literally lay down the divine LIFE for us, in order to rescue us. Indeed, God doesn’t have it IN for us, as the religious leaders in Jesus’ day seemed to believe, but in the Christ Event, God is CREATING an “in” for us, inviting us back into relationship with Godself, AND into the Kingdom of God. 

 

I know we say we believe this stuff. I’ve been in a whole host of Methodist meetings where that call/response thing was chanted: “God is GOOD, ALL the time! ALL the TIME, God is GOOD!” And then we dragged out all the old rules that listed just who all this “Good God” would smite because of their behavior, their “unorthodox theology,” or their unacceptable sexual orientation. The “in” God sought to create to save us was too quickly used on some to show them the door because their “authority of scripture” was inadequate, or they had “chosen” to fall in love with the wrong gender. “Sin” became what THEY do, not what WE do.” If the tongue is a minuscule, yet extremely dangerous organ, as scripture says, then the word “they” may be its worst poison, separating the "us" from the "them."

 

This week, at least for Methodists, this began to change. Our 2020 General Conference (yeah, weird, I know—2020 General Conference, thanks to OUR rules...) voted with an oversized majority to remove exclusionary language from our rules that had, since 1972, been used to relegate the LGBTQ community to a prohibited “they.” With the actions of this Conference, a healing of Methodist LGBTQ persons can begin. The “lost siblings” have been invited home. It’s time to “kill the fatted calf” and break out the rainbow robes. Should we celebrate this Good News? Yes, but first, we must cry with them, for their pain and rejection has been legion and long. With the “wave of the hand” (a vote), a “new commandment” has been instituted, but the healing will be slow and long, and no apology will wipe away decades of banishment and disdain. While our LGBTQ siblings were never “incompatible” in God’s eyes, our contrived rules and harmful “interpretation” of scripture originally intended to set us all “free, for freedom,” has done its harm. Now, though, we have a “new commandment.” May the healing begin!

 

In this weekend’s lectionary text I’ve selected, Jesus turns the “in” into a LOVE IN! There is a reason he goes absolutely nuts in the message related in this text to “LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS I HAVE LOVED YOU.” Actually there are MANY reasons, but for Methodists this week, one we may cite is that he must have been looking far off in the future—to a Methodist General Conference in 1972—when we would declare a whole branch of the human family as “incompatible.” So, seeing this, Jesus immediately began to hammer out justice and ring a bell of freedom, and its name was LOVE. Like the hippies of my day, he staged a Love In. And his Love In would be the “in” for all people. It says so, right here in this text: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends…” This week, we Methodists finally pronounced our LGBTQ siblings, “friends.” 

 

Of course there is a problem with all of this. For it to happen in the Methodist family, the “elder brother” had to get mad and leave. 25 to 30% of our household exited the back door. Even as we welcome our LGBTQ siblings and begin mending our relationship with them, we recognize that someday we will need to find a way to heal the chasm opened up by the disaffiliation of so many churches, pastors, and ones who were earlier disenfranchised and marginalized by the unfair judgment of the church. The healing of the LGBTQ wounds may begin immediately; addressing the issue of forgiving and reconciling with those who left, claiming we are “apostate” and “un-orthodox” in our beliefs, will take time. Most of us aren’t ready to address this, yet. For now, we’ll do our best to follow Jesus’ “Love In” example to welcome those who have, for so long, been on the outside, looking in.

 

In this text from John 15, Jesus is quoted as saying, “You did not choose ME, I chose you.” Let’s think about that for a moment. What does it mean, when held up against the prevailing evangelical message of “finding Jesus,” or “coming to know Jesus”? What of the unction to “give your life to Christ,” or “inviting Christ into your life”? Maybe Jesus really DOES do the “choosing,” and he chooses all of us. I’m not suggesting “universal salvation,” other than to point out that Christ HAS offered it to every human being, and the “ticket” has already been punched. Rather than “coming to Jesus,” Jesus has come to us, has chosen us, and the only “decision” we make is when we wake up to the conscious fact of this. And what if someone doesn’t come to “know” this, are they still “chosen” by Jesus? Frankly, this is WAY beyond my paygrade to call, but it sure sounds like Jesus is the one doing the choosing. John Wesley understood this. His “orthodoxy” was pretty darn unorthodox! “Offer them Christ” is a lot different than “leading people to Christ.” We offer to all what Jesus has already offered to all. Some with catch on with it, others may take longer to “see” it, or may never “come around” before Christ chooses them! Wesley also opened the Eucharist to anyone, including unbaptized, not-yet Christians, because he believed they might come to realize their “chosen-ness” at the Communion table. Many did, and many still do, in my experience. 

This invitation for “any” to come to the table of the Lord was part of my doctoral project and thesis on “Welcoming the Stranger: Assimilating Guests into the Congregation.” I wrote that this is an “un-orthodox” tenet of true Wesleyan theology, but that it is key to the kind of “full welcome” we offer. During my oral defense of the dissertation, one of my readers “objected,” out of disbelief that this is what Methodists truly believe. (His denomination only invites “baptized Christians” to the Communion table, believing it is a restricted banquet.) He reached out to a fellow professor—a Methodist—who assured him that my assertion was accurate. Of course, another reader brought up the fact that my denomination, while offering the open table, closed most opportunities to members of the LGBTQ community. Against that, I could not argue, at least not back in 1998. Today, after this week, things would be different! 

 

Jesus’ command to “love one another as I have loved you” has now opened the door to another group formerly marginalized by The United Methodist Church. Someday, it will lead us to some form of reconciliation with those who have disaffiliated from the denomination, after we get over our pain from it. Of course, our “pain” pales in comparison to the pain our LGBTQ siblings have experienced since 1972. Jesus tried for a Love In. We organized, built hierarchies, and started legislating rules to make sure that the “body” was “pure.” We’ve come a long way from the love command, frankly, and the path we took was most likely the wrong one. At the least, it led to a dead end. 

 

The Good News is what the hymn writer told us: “I serve a Risen Savior, he’s IN THE WORLD today!” Because Jesus lives, and the Spirit of Jesus is among us, always, the Love command can be “resurrected,” too! This week, the “finger” of the Body of Christ known as The United Methodist Church took an important step in again heeding it, and moving closer to “purity.” We are again “welcoming the stranger,” a Bible “code” for building a “love bridge” to someone different than we. May we “reborn” United Methodists begin the rejoicing. The time will come to reconcile with those who rejected us. It has to, for the Love command will take us there. Amen.