May 6, 2007
The Fifth Sunday of Easter (Year C)
Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35
I don’t know how many of you have seen the WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) bracelets. They were very popular five or so years ago. Teenagers were the first to start wearing them. They were meant to be a guide to them personally when they had a choice to make, like drinking or behaving in ways contrary to their best interests.
I don’t know if they worked or not, and they never had much appeal to me. But over the years I have seen other rubber bracelets that people wear for different reasons, in support of cancer research, and other terrible diseases, and for many other causes and ideas.
So this morning I am going to ask each of you to imagine that you are wearing a rubber bracelet. It can be whatever color you want. I am imagining mine as bright pinkish red. Now, on that bracelet I want you to imagine the question, “How did Jesus love?”
Hold your arm up. It’s got a bracelet on it-asking, “How did Jesus love?”
For in today’s gospel Jesus directs his friends and disciples to “Love one another as he has loved them.”
And it seems to me we don’t really need to know so much what Jesus might do as to know what Jesus did do to show us his love for us.
How did Jesus love? What exactly does it mean to follow Jesus and love one another as he loved us?
To answer that question, I think we begin at the beginning, when Jesus, the Word became human, Jesus, the Word, the one who was with God, was God, is God, became human, to honor our humanity, to make it holy, because he loved us so much he wanted us to know the face of God in human form.
If we who follow honor human form as lovingly as he did, then we too will love one another as he loved us.
Then once human, once grown, Jesus began his ministry after being baptized! Just as we are baptized! But he was baptized not because he needed to be forgiven for his sins, but because he wanted so much to be in solidarity with us, to be in all ways as we are, even to the point of recognizing that as a male of the rabbinical class he had privileges and opportunities that most others did not. So perhaps, perhaps, he was baptized, not for his sins, but for the sins committed on his behalf – the sins of classism and sexism come to mind.
Then Jesus began his ministry in earnest, and he took care of those who were most marginalized. He not only healed lepers from afar, but he touched them. He healed the woman who bled by the touch of his garment; he ate with tax collectors and sinners.
He loved those who the culture said were unlovable. Prostitutes, women in general, and lowly fishermen made up his entourage. They didn’t arrange for deluxe rooms and special consumables as today’s celebrities require when they travel. Rather he stayed with those who would have him; sent his friends for a donkey to ride into
He loved others by being with them, reaching out to the impossible to love, seeing in them dignity and potential.
How did Jesus love? He told the truth. He didn’t varnish it, but he forgave without question – think of the woman at the well. She told him the truth about herself – that he already knew of course. And then because she knew she was loved anyway, she was able to convert her whole village. Knowing she was loved was what empowered her. He forgave and that is probably the most difficult kind of love to live into, to forgive.
How did Jesus love? He told the men who would stone the adulteress woman to death to cast the first stone – if they had never sinned – and the men all walked away. His love was not only about forgiveness, but also empowering people to change their lives when they go awry.
How did Jesus love? He got down on his knees and washed the dirty, calloused feet of his friends. He did not fight back when unjustly accused, not because he couldn’t win, but because winning would have meant sinking to the level of the accusers.
How did Jesus love? He wined and dined, all the time, with his friends. He partied. And who were his friends? A new family he created, composed of blood relatives to be sure, but also of men and women who became brothers and sisters by their working together. He taught them, and then empowered them. And they went out as he sent them, to love others as they themselves had been loved.
How did Jesus love? He healed people, not only of their physical ailments, but of their broken hearts and lives. He healed them by loving them.
And so with all that and so much more on our radar screen about how Jesus loved, how do we live our lives with such love? What does that bracelet on our arms mean to us?
I think it means that we consciously honor our baptismal vows every day. I think it means that we see the good in those we have trouble loving. I think it means that we share what we have. I think it means that we not isolate ourselves and continue to have good friends and good community, here and in various other places of our lives. I think it means that we are transparent and honest, not only with others, but probably more importantly with ourselves, living not with self deception as our primary defense against someone finding out our shortcomings, but facing the mirror and knowing what we can and cannot do and depending upon others to work with us, to do and be the people God intends us to be, to be the church, the followers, the disciples we are charged with being.
Maggie, and many others, wear a white bracelet on their arms. It says “One” on it. And in some ways that bracelet stands for a way forward, a way of being there for the poor and disenfranchised. For the bracelet is in support of the MDG’s (Millennium Development Goals). It is a reminder that if we all work together we can eliminate extreme poverty in the world by the year 2015.
But that is only one color of bracelet. There are many, many colors and much, so much, that needs to be done by everyone to love one another as Jesus loved us. But probably the most basic thing we must do is change our mindset, to have it begin with love, to see each other, and all those whom we don’t much like, and even those we don’t even see because they are so off our radar screen, to see, to honor and to love them, as Jesus did.
That powerful love of Jesus is not optional for Christians. It is our core value, the core of our faith, the center of our being. And it is the way we are to be, first and foremost, in all things: Lovers of one another.
Good people, love others. Love as Jesus loved. Wear your bracelet, if not on your arm, in your heart, and may it become how others recognize you.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd