5th Sunday in Easter Acts 11:1-18 & John 13:34-35  May 2, 2010

       5Easter2010                           Acts 11:1-18 & John 13:34-35                           May 2, 2010
Loving Spirit, give us your grace to know the love you have for us that it may shape the living of our lives. Amen.

This morning gives us the Gospel in a nutshell.  32 words and we have Jesus’ summary of the Christian life.  ““Love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  The brevity of this Gospel reminds me of the website “22words.”  You may have seen it.  It asks: If you only had 22 words to use, how would you respond to topics like “My life so far,” or, “What Star Wars character are you and why?”  Of course, lots say they are Yoda.  It could be fun for Faith Lutheran to do our own “22words.”  Maybe we could write “Something your grateful for” in 22 words.  It could become a regular column in Faith Talks: Gratitude in 22 words. Write one and send it to me.

It is something like this that Jesus does in John 13:34-35 – except Jesus uses 32 words (in English anyway). Jesus calls us to love one another as we are loved by him.  And the difficulty is that this is not just any kind of love.  It’s not a sentimental love.  It’s not a love we always understand.  It’s not a love that gives us all the answers. It’s not a love that takes the easy way.

The love of Jesus grew from his relationship with God. Jesus spent time with God – up on the mountain, out in the desert, gathered with others in the temple and in the garden.  Jesus was always spending time getting to know God’s love. Those who expected more productivity from Jesus could have seen this as a waste of time. Why wasn’t he transforming the world?  Well, he was.  He was modeling to the world the power of knowing God’s love.  It alone can turn our world around, our community around, our lives around. And it’s not without significance that Jesus gave this command to love as we are loved on the night he was betrayed.

It’s easy to love when all is well. But it’s where it is not well that Jesus calls and empowers us to go and a make a difference.  As St. Francis said, “Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is sadness, joy; where there is despair, hope.”   

In John 13 Jesus washes his disciples’ feet – even the feet of the one who betrays him. And this is a big clue.  It’s a big clue about the love Jesus has in mind. It’s a love too great for us to be able to manufacture on our own.  When we try to just pull this kind of love out of ourselves, we fall short.  But when we love with the love God gives, it surprises us every time.

On the night Jesus was betrayed he knew God’s love held him. He trusted because he had spent time getting to know this love. Jesus trusted even when he faced abandonment by friends, betrayal by a system, and crucifixion by a crowd. He knew he was loved and that love sustained him.  

It is this empowering love that we are called to offer love one another.  It is far from easy because it’s not “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine.” Or, “I’ll love those who love me back.” I wrote a Master’s Thesis once on the stages of moral development – Piaget and Kohlberg and all those researchers.  It was clear that the most common “love” in the world is “I’ll scratch your back. You scratch mine.” But that’s not the kind of love Jesus is talking about. Jesus has in mind a more demanding love.  But it is possible for us. Jesus said we could do this too.  He wouldn’t have told us to do something that was impossible.  We can learn to love as Christ loves.  It’s an ongoing journey to which grace invites us.

We learn by first receiving.  We learn by spending time with this love – like Jesus did – by rubbing shoulders with it, sitting in circles with it, savoring all the ways God promises to love us first. So the first thing that has to happen is for us to get out of the way of God loving us and the best way I know to do that is to do what Jesus did – to make space for God in our lives – space where we can be attentive to how tenderly God loves us. When we’ve gotten out of the way, the love that is always there becomes evident.  It showers us daily on the good days and the bad.
 
The other day I was attending a small group meeting.  One had arrived early to set up the chairs in our usual circle shape. After we all arrived she commented that she didn’t know why she had set up 6 chairs because she knew only 5 people were coming.  It jumped out at me how good it was that there were 6 chairs.  The group meets to listen for the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Why not leave a chair for that Spirit?  The chair could be a reminder to be attentive to the loving Spirit.

An Alban Institute book, Practicing Right Relationship, suggests doing this. It invites making a visual space for the Holy Spirit – not that the Spirit needs it, but that we need reminders to be attentive to God’s love. I’ve invited our 4th to 6th graders to create a Holy Spirit chair for our sanctuary for Pentecost. Visuals are a part of what God uses to draw us to faith. We might want a Holy Spirit chair for our homes as well. We have an antique chair in our garage that’s made me wonder what my mom was thinking when she had it reupholstered with reds and oranges.  Well now I know!  I think it’s meant as a Holy Spirit chair and needs to be moved from the garage to a central place in the house.  I’ll see how that goes over!

To learn to love as we are loved means to make room for the loving Holy Spirit in everything we do, in every plan we make, and in every conversation we have. A good daily question to take into the week is, “How is the Holy Spirit showing love to us that we might in turn show to another?” We learn to love as Christ loves by becoming acquainted with the Spirit’s love.

The Holy Spirit isn’t floating in the air somewhere.  The Spirit is the daily breath we take.  When we wake up and realize we’re breathing – we’re taking in the Spirit of love and how good it is to attend to that. The Spirit comes to us also through the water and word, bread and wine of worship.

In today’s Acts reading – Peter was preaching to the people, but Peter was aware it wasn’t his words that caused the transformation that happened.  Throughout the story in Acts, Peter acknowledges that it’s all about the Spirit. It is a cooperation of speaker and hearers together with the Spirit. Preaching itself is not just the preacher’s work.  It is the work of the Spirit and the listeners who open themselves not so much to the preacher as to the Spirit who works through all our humble efforts. 

Sometimes the preacher is the music, or the art, or the prayers or the way the scripture is read.  What each worshiper brings to worship is as important as the preacher’s and musician’s and artist’s and reader’s work. Whoever the leaders are, Martin Luther was very clear that the Spirit engages us through the word, visible and audible. This event of worship is one of the primary ways we get to know real love – God’s love that then sends us out to love others with this same love. 

The Spirit’s work may not always stand out in the moments of worship. But through the week, if we are watchful with the Spirit – it may well be that the word sung, prayed or preached in worship may come back to us. If however, we rarely are caught by the word, we may want to examine not just the musicians, artists, readers or preachers, but also the listeners. Are we receiving those who share the word as messengers of the Christ?

I invite us all to pay attention to the music, the art, the prayers, the readings, the visuals, the sermons among us in the next months – not just by judging how well they are all prepared for us, but by attending to how well you we are preparing for this encounter together with the loving Spirit.  Christ loves us not just with human love, but with divine love as well. We learn to love by attending with heart and mind to this holy love.  

Love is the essence of worship.  We listen for words of love, gather around a table of love, are welcomed and washed by waters at the font of love. Worship is the event of God’s love becoming flesh in our lives and sending us out with that love into the world.   

Before you come to worship each week, take a moment to pray for our worship life – for all the leaders – and thank you for the ways you share in the leadership of our life together as well.  All of your efforts matter as you prayerfully prepare for our life together.  And another way you can help is to join us for lunch at Celebration Bible Study on Tuesdays at 11:30.  For one hour we engage the texts together.  We have Celebrate lectionaries you can read ahead of time. We are now closing the office during that hour so no other business is happening.  Bring your lunch and come.

If you cannot come on Tuesdays take a moment still to begin your preparation for worship. It just might transform what we expect from this hour, and what we leave with, and it matters more than we know – for our calling is to love one another as Christ loves us – and we do that only as fully as we come to trust how radically God first loves us.

                                                                                              Amen 

   +Pastor Peg Schultz-Akerson, to the glory of God
Faith Lutheran Church, Chico, CA