Choosing love
Fifth Sunday of Easter + John 13:31-35 + Pr. Michelle Sevig
For a number of years now I’ve been a fan of the photoblog Humans of New York. Photographer Brandon Stanton began photographing New Yorkers all over the city back in 2010, just after losing his job. Somewhere along the way he started interviewing his subjects in addition to photographing them. Usually he asks one of two questions, “What is your greatest struggle?” or “Give me one piece of advice.”
One of the Humans of New York that Brandon interviewed and photographed was an older woman with wisps of gray hair sticking out from a furry cap. When asked for one piece of advice, she said, “When my husband was dying, I said (to him): ‘Moe, how am I supposed to live without you?’ He told me: ‘Take the love you have for me and spread it around.’”
Isn’t that just beautiful? Take the love you have for me and spread it around.
How are the disciples supposed to live when Jesus is no longer with them? To paraphrase Jesus and the ‘Human of New York’ I just quoted, he says, ‘Take the love I’ve shown you and pour it out in the world.’ Just as I have loved you…you also should love one another.”
Love one another. That’s it. End of story. A short passage from scripture with a big message. If only it were as easy to do as it is to memorize. Love one another as I have loved you. Because it’s the “as I have loved you” part of this new commandment that is so hard to grasp, to live into, to actually do.
Jesus loved Judas who betrayed him and Peter who denied knowing him. Jesus loved the disciples who would fail him miserably. He loved the criminal executed beside him and he loved the ones deemed unworthy of love or acceptance, inclusion or forgiveness.
The love that Jesus demonstrates is not based on the worth of the recipients, and Jesus commands his disciples to love others in the same way. He doesn’t say “if you believe the right things, if you worship like this or go to that church, if you memorize the bible or pray every day, if you vote correctly, if you... fill in the blank with whatever you’ve been told is the right way to be a Christian. No–he says love one another, as I have loved you. That’s it.
Too often we think of love only as an emotion, a feeling between two people who mutually respect each other. But love is a verb. It’s action oriented, not passive or limited to an emotion. Jesus didn’t simply say, “I love you” to his disciples, but he showed them what love from the Father looks like.
In the beginning of today’s reading, Jesus talks about glorification, about God being glorified in him, and he in God. It’s a bit difficult to understand and seems out of place with the rest about loving others. Dr. Karoline Lewis, helped me to understand “glorification” in this context in a new way. Typically we think glorify means to amplify, or make something noticeable. When I read/hear about Jesus’ glorification I think of a bright aura surrounding his head, like a saint or an angel, but that doesn’t show us anything about love.
Dr. Lewis says glorification here means that Jesus is the visible presence of God. In Jesus we see who God, the father, really is. God’s glory is made fully known, fully present, visible in Jesus.
Just prior to this exchange in the gospel of John, Jesus takes on the role of a slave and washes the disciples dirty, dusty feet. An act of love. While eating dinner, his betrayer Judas is with them, and even though Jesus knows Judas will turn him over to be killed, he feeds him. An act of love. Jesus knows that Peter, one of his closest companions will deny him. Yet his parting words to his disciples focus not on blame for their past and future failures, but instead on preparing them to love others as he has loved them.
Loving as Jesus loves, is a call to be the ongoing, visible presence of God in the world. Choosing love, even when love is hard to come by. Extending love even when people are unlovely.
Carrie Ballenger, an ELCA pastor serving in East Jerusalem among the Palestinian people, asked on her Facebook page, “What does that love look like? Is it always kind and gentle? Or is it sometimes standing in the path of a bullet? Is it protecting the body of a loved one, even at the risk of your own body? What is love? Jesus, help me understand. And help me to love, even when I don’t want to.”
What is love? Maybe loving as Jesus loved, means stepping outside of our own comfort zone and speaking up when someone uses a racially inappropriate word or metaphor-speaking the truth to them in love. Maybe loving as Jesus loved is going to the clinic, moving carefully through protestors, to be with someone who has just made the most difficult decision of their life. Even if you don’t believe in abortion. Maybe it means, as a congregation, discerning the ways we have benefited from white supremacy and working toward making reparations. Maybe loving as Jesus loves is holding the one who sobbed as they told you the most vulnerable thing they could ever voice: that they were gay or lesbian, bisexual or trans.
We know what to do to love as Jesus loves. Weep with those who weep. Laugh with those who laugh. Touch the untouchables. Feed the hungry. Release the captive. Forgive the sinner. Confront the oppressor. Hold each other close. Tell each other the truth. Love one another, even when it’s hard or messy, because it is through this impossible love that our dying world will see, taste, touch and hear Christ who loves everyone.
Make your home in Jesus’ love, which is as abundant as this feast and as free as the water in this font. It is God’s love that we share, because we know there is no person or situation, no prison real or imagined, that God’s love cannot redeem and where God’s love and light cannot get in.
