No Greater Love

Scriptures:     Acts 10:44-48                         Psalm 98

I John 5:1-6                            John 15:9-17

In our readings from John’s gospel for the past two weeks, Jesus has given his disciples images of what it means to be his followers – and for those who would later would read the Gospel, including us, images of what it means to be church.  The first image is that of sheep provided for and protected by Jesus, the good shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep.  The second image is that of branches growing from Jesus, the true vine. In the first image, our safety depends on being together in one place with Jesus; in the second image, our life as believers depends on our connection to Jesus and to one another; if we are separated (or if we separate ourselves), the life of the Spirit within us will shrivel and die.   Being together and staying connected – these were key to the first followers of Jesus as they  found a way forward after the resurrection.  Being together and staying connected are likewise key for us who continue to find a way forward in following Jesus today.

In todays Gospel reading, Jesus moves beyond images and metaphors to get down to specifics:  “As the Father has loved me, so I love you.  Abide” – that is to say, remain, stay, continue, live, dwell – “in that love.  Just as I have kept the Father’s commandments and abide in his love, so I want you to keep my commandments and abide in my love.  This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved  you.”  And so Jesus did not just teach, but led by example – just as Jesus experienced God’s love, Jesus wanted his followers to experience God’s love.  Just as a fish lives in water, and dies if removed from the water, just as we as human beings live surrounded by air, with air filling our lungs, and will choke to death if our air supply is cut off, we as Jesus followers, as spiritual beings, are to live in love, surrounded by love, filled with love, love within us, love all around us.  That’s what Jesus wanted for his followers, what he wants for us.  And, again leading by example,  just as Jesus showed God’s love to his followers, Jesus wanted his followers to show God’s love to one another and to those around them. 

We need love.  We need to receive love, and we need to give love.  From our birth, as our mothers hold us and gaze at us, and we at our mothers, just the experience of being held shapes our minds, literally stimulates growth of neurons in the brain that sustain us.   The opposite is true:  if we don’t have that early sense of being held and loved, our brains develop differently.  In Romania, circa the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, behavioral scientists observed children who had been raised from infancy in Romanian orphanages.  These children didn’t always get even the basics of food and clothing, and were greatly neglected emotionally, being tied to beds instead of being picked up and held. These children got very little in the way of love or even basic human contact.   Even after these children were later removed from orphanages and adopted, that early lack of care marked them for life, as they had trouble bonding with their adoptive parents and had trouble forming relationships as they grew up.  A whole branch of psychological thought, attachment theory, began largely from observations of these Romanian orphans.  One of the basic premises of attachment theory is that if a baby or a small child grows up with a sense of security and of being loved, the child will have confidence in exploring the world around it….and the reverse is true, that a lack of love and safety early in life will cause the child to feel anxiety as it explores the world around it.  So the saying is true, that the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. 

The same is true in our spiritual life.  If we know, really know – from the top of our heads to the tips of our toes, from the tips of our fingers to the marrow in our bones – that God loves us, if we carry that sense of being loved with us into everything we do, it makes a huge difference…indeed, it makes all the difference.   In our reading from I John – written by the author of John’s gospel, but later – John writes:  “For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”  There’s a praise song that goes, “Victory, I got the victory, I got the sweet sweet victory in Jesus….”  Now, I gotta tell ya, though, most days I’m not feeling it, and maybe that’s just me.  Most days, I don’t feel like I’m conquering the world…many days, I’m just trying to get by.   If I can get through the day, maybe help a few people along the way, most days, that’s enough for me, and I can go to sleep in peace.  But the word translated “conquered”, nika can also be translated “overcome” – and that word makes more sense to me.  If we know, really know, really really know, that God loves us, we can overcome all the garbage – all the unreasonable expectations, all the crazy demands, all the stress, the insults, the neglect, the abuse – that the world throws at us.  If we are rooted and grounded in knowing that God loves us, no matter what, we can get through all that, and come out on the other side stronger for the experience.  And so, in this sense of having overcome adversity, we can claim victory in Jesus.

We need love.  We need to receive love, and we need to give love.  Jesus said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”   A pond that takes in water but does not release water eventually becomes stagnant and unhealthy….and so does a human spirit that has grown dependent on constant reassurances of love from God and others, but is unwilling to give love.  And Jesus made a really strong statement about the quality of love he expected from his followers:  “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.”  So again, Jesus led by example:  as Jesus laid down his life for his followers, so he expects us to lay down our lives for one another and for our neighbors.

Now, what does that mean?   We think of Jesus laying down his life on the cross and dying.  But if we all lay down our lives for one another, as in die for one another, at the same time, that would look like Jonestown after Jim Jones’ Kool-Aid party…..and I’m pretty sure that’s not what Jesus was going for.  But Jesus laid down his life, not only on the cross, but throughout his ministry.  He could have chosen another path, just kept working as a carpenter and living a quiet life.  But instead he went out, called disciples, spent time with them, taught them, cared for them, loved them.  He could have stayed in his hometown, but instead traveled, healing and teaching, meeting opposition from religious leaders along the way.  And so Jesus laid down his life for his disciples, not only at the end, not only at the crucifixion, but throughout his whole ministry.  And in this sense we can lay down our lives for one another and our neighbors, not all at once, but day by day, on the installment plan if you want to think of it like that, daily turning away from our own priorities and perks in order to be present for others in need.  And, of course, history tells us that if we live in love, we may well be called on to die in love as well.  Love those whom those in power tell us not to love – as Dietrich Bonhoeffer did in Germany, as Archbishop Oscar Romero did in El Salvador – and it may cost us our lives, even while opening to us the gates of eternal life.

What if we knew, really knew, how much God loves us.  How would our lives be differen?  And what if we knew, really knew, how much God loves our neighbor, especially the one that scares us or annoys us or works our last nerve?  Now, we can sit back and say, “Well, that’s God’s job, to love the unloveable.”  Sort of like the bumper sticker that reads, “Jesus loves you.  Everyone else thinks you’re a jerk.”  But as Jesus’ disciples, we’re to love those whom God loves, even when we find them very hard to love.

Indeed, Dorothy Day, now under consideration for sainthood in the Roman Catholic church, was unsentimental about God’s love.  She quoted Dostoevsky in saying that “love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”  Sometimes love in action means doing for others when they’re incapable of doing for themselves.  And we do it – certainly changing diapers is nobody’s favorite activity, but because you love your baby, well, that’s part of the package.  It may become part of the package when our parents become incapable of caring for themselves…and because you love your mom or your dad, you do it, or make arrangements for others to provide the needed care.  And it extends to those beyond our families.  Along these lines I’m reminded of a late afternoon when I was a member of Old First Reformed Church.  Old First housed homeless men during the winter, and so even during the summer, a lot of homeless persons hung around the church.   This one afternoon, when I and another member were at the church with our pastor, Rev Geneva Butz, a deranged mentally ill man was in the courtyard in front of the church, talking to himself, taking off his clothing and tearing up a large piece of cardboard into small pieces.  Geneva coaxed the man into her car, and with I and the other Old First member on each side of the man in the back seat, we drove to the Hall Mercer mental health center and had him 302’d – involuntarily committed.  It was anything but a romantic interlude.  “Can you feel the love tonight” wasn’t the song playing inside my head at that moment.  But, even though there was a whole building full of loft apartments across from the church, nobody from the apartments was coming out to the rescue.  And so it was left to Pastor Geneva, another church member and  myself to see that this man received help. And, of course, for weeks afterward, we jokingly warned others about getting into Geneva’s car, because who knew where you might end up…you might even end up getting locked away.  But even though it didn’t feel like it at the time, it was an act of love for a man we’d never met, didn’t know, and  likely wouldn’t see again.

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”  For Jesus, love in action meant being misunderstood, being vilified, ultimately being nailed to a cross.  I John reminds us that Jesus came, not only with water, but with water and blood.  That is to say, Jesus’ love for us carried the ultimate price for him.  For us, love in action means being there to help people when they’re at their most helpless or their most unloveable – and dealing with misunderstanding, abuse, and even hatred from those who feel that some persons are unworthy of love – likely projecting their own feelings of unloveability onto those they consider “the other”. 

Jesus called on his disciples to bear fruit, fruit that would last.  Here Jesus is giving his disciples assurance that what they do in love, be it ever so small, will have a lasting impact.  The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, spoke of everyone’s works being tested by fire, whether they were made of gold or silver or costly stones or wood or hay.  In today’s Gospel reading, it is those works that are done out of love that are fruit that will last, fruit that will stand the test of time.   We have no way of knowing how much impact our acts of love have in the lives of those around us – and likewise we have no idea how much impact a lack of love on our part has.

In our reading from Acts, we see the disciples discovering that God’s love is broader than they imagined.  In stories such as Philip baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch and Peter being called by God to the house of Cornelius the Roman centurion, the earliest followers of Jesus learned that God loved those outside the Jewish faith – while it seems obvious to us, it was a revolutionary revelation to t hem – and so they acted to expand their circle of love, baptizing those Gentiles on whom the spirit had come.  And those baptisms bore fruit that would last, as the Gospel took hold among the Gentiles even as it struggled among Jesus’ Jewish followers.

For our members and friends here at Emanuel, this place has been a place of love.  May we carry the love we experience here outside the walls of the church, outside to our neighbors who need to know, in concrete, tangible ways, that God loves them and so do we.  May God’s love overcome both our own limitations and the defenses of our neighbors, so that the circle of love expands, so that our congregation can embrace our neighborhood in God’s love. Amen.

Abide In Love

Scriptures:     Acts 8:26-40                           Psalm 22:25-31

I John 4:7-21                          John 15:1-8

In 1624 the poet John Donne wrote these famous words:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less

As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:

Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Some 340 years later, in 1964, Paul Simon wrote the words to his song “I Am A Rock” which contain the polar opposite sentiment, and here’s one verse:  “I’ve built walls, a fortress deep and mighty, that none may penetrate.  I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain, it’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.  I am a rock, I am an island.”  The song ends with the words, “And a rock feels no pain.  And an island never cries.”

I surely wouldn’t want to put Paul Simon on the same level as John Donne.  But it may be interesting to consider whose vision we find more inviting – Donne’s vision of a humanity so intertwined that we are diminished even by the death of someone on the other side of the world we’ve never met, or Paul Simon’s vision of a life walled off from all connection to others, and the pain those connections may bring.  Maybe it depends on how what kind of day we’re having. Even the most extroverted among us may feel a need to shut out the world from time to time.  Or likely we’re not entirely comfortable with either vision….perhaps we feel comfortable within a small network of close connections – family, close friends….and beyond that close circle, our sense of connection to others may vary with passing moods and passing days.

Last week, we read Jesus’ description of himself as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.  In that image, we, as the church, are Jesus’ flock, all together in one place, spiritually if not geographically, and Jesus is the one who provides for us, protects us, goes out to find us when we get off course.  Jesus is the good shepherd who knows each of us by name, but also the one who cares for us in community, as part of the flock – and the other members of the flock are part of the care provided by the Good Shepherd.

In this week’s reading, Jesus gives us an even more intimate image, that of himself as a grapevine, and we his followers – the church – as the branches.  In that image, we are not only together, but actually physically connected, with the same vine bringing the same nutrients to each branch, even to each twig.  And if a branch is separated from the vine, it shrivels up and dies, just as a grape that is separated long enough from the vine will shrivel into a raisin.

There’s that word, over and over – abide.   “Abide in me as I abide in  you…..those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit….”  That word abide has somewhat gone out of use – I chose the hymn “Abide With Me” to give us some sense of how it was used – but if you look up different translations of this passage – the Bible Gateway website will give you dozens of options – the Greek word for abide, μείνατε, is translated with words such as “remain”, as in “remain in me”, or as “live in me”, or “stay united with me” or “grow in me”. 

Jesus does warn us that abiding in him, being one of the branches on his vine, isn’t going to be painless.  If we are branches that bear fruit, we are pruned or trimmed so that we bear more fruit.  And if we don’t bear fruit, we get cut off entirely.  Both ways we feel the knife.

If we’re bearing fruit, what does it feel like to be trimmed so that we bear more fruit.  At any stage of our walk with Jesus, we may be doing things that are fruitful, enriching to us and lifegiving to others.  But as we mature, we may leave some things behind in order to take on new roles and ministries that are even more enriching to ourselves and lifegiving to others – and also so that other people can take on our former activities and experience the goodness we once experienced.  For me personally, this would look like coming from my former congregation, Old First Reformed, where I was a member of their choir, to come here to Emanuel.  Joining the choir at Old First was literally the first thing I did when I started attending; I was up in the choir loft the second Sunday I was there, and nearly every Sunday thereafter for almost 20 years.  Over the years, with changing choir directors, I greatly enjoyed learning an expanding range of music, new harmonies, new time signatures and rhythms and tempos.  I loved how our choir sounded when we were really in tune with one another, really listening to one another, how our vocal parts interacted with one another.  We even sang at other churches now and then, and for a few years I sang, along with one or two Old Firsters, once a year in the Novena choir at St Anne’s Roman Catholic church down on Lehigh Avenue.  In coming here, I left that behind, cold turkey – but honestly, I don’t miss it, and I don’t look back.  Singing in the choir was deeply meaningful to me as I hope the choir’s music was lifegiving in some way to the congregation – for a time.  For me, that time passed a little over ten years ago.   Other people, including some newer members, are doing a magnificent job singing in the choir at Old First, and God has given me new work to do here at Emanuel. 

The other part of Jesus’ message is chilling – that if we don’t bear fruit, we’ll be cut off.   It sounds cruel, but a branch that bears no fruit is draining nutrients from branches that could otherwise bear more fruit.  For the health of the plant as a whole, unhealthy branches are removed.  I think we’ve all seen the truth of this statement not only in churches but in other volunteer organizations that at one time served a vital need but at some point got stuck in place while the world passed them by, and are now meeting for the sake of meeting and existing for the sake of existing, and not to serve any current need.    Such organizations exist in every community, draining resources of time and money from a small, committed core of longtime members without offering them or the wider community much in exchange – time and energy that could be put to better use.  In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam noted how numerous fraternal organizations – Elks and Moose and such – along with community groups such as the Jaycees, at least from his perspective, seemed to be dying on the vine.  Along those lines I have to say that I’ve been encouraged, not only that we continue to take in new members as we did last Sunday, but also by initiatives such as the homeless outreach that Sean and Carol are leading – supported by donations from other church members - the backpacks and the collection of supplies for the women’s shelter that Penny is doing, the work at the cupboard that Allan has been doing for years and with which Margie has more recently been helping out, and other member-led initiatives that are connecting us to our neighbors.   They represent a significant investment of time and effort, but they just may be God’s way of telling us that He still has work – holy work, Kingdom work - for us to do.

Ultimately, beyond specific activities, the bottom line is love.  If we abide in Christ, love is our default setting.  Love is the lens through which view everything around us. The writer of John’s gospel expands on what it means to abide in Christ in our reading from the first letter of John, fourth chapter:  “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit…. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”   Our abiding in love for others is the testimony to our abiding in Christ; our lack of love for others likewise testifies to how far we are from abiding in Christ. 

In our reading from Acts, Philip gives us a glimpse of what it looks like to abide in love.   Led by an angel of the Lord, Philip followed the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, a wilderness road.  He saw an Ethiopian eunuch, treasurer to the Ethiopian queen, returning home from worshipping in Jerusalem.  Even though he worshipped, he wasn’t considered fully a member of the community of faith, both because he was a foreigner and because he was a eunuch, one who’s reproductive capacity had been destroyed.  From his connection to the queen he was powerful, and yet he was powerless to produce an heir or continue his family lineage.  The eunuch was reading the passage from Isaiah about God’s suffering servant, whose life had been cut off from the earth, leaving no descendants.  The eunuch saw a parallel between this passage and his own life.  Philip ran up to his chariot and led him to faith in Christ.  When they passed a body of water, the eunuch asked to be baptized, and Philip granted the request.  Philip owed the man nothing, and in fact from a worldly perspective had every reason to let this outsider pass by.  But because Philip abided in Christ’s love, that love led him to reach out to this foreigner.  Clearly, this wasn’t a love that was possessive or controlling in any way – after the baptism, Philip and the eunuch went their separate ways.  But in that moment of connection, the love of God abiding in Philip changed the course of the eunuch’s life.

“I am the vine, you are the branches.  Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.”  In our world we have to work to stay connected –  with social media, we can be in connection with someone across the globe while being disconnected from someone across the dinner table, physically present but emotionally absent in one place while mentally and emotionally present in a place a thousand miles away.  May our connection to Christ, the true vine, give us the strength and resources to be truly present for our loved ones, for our fellow church members, and for those neighbors near and far whom he has called us to serve. Amen.