If We Have Love For One Another

John 13:31-35

This last Sunday night we spent some time thinking about forgiveness with our confirmation youth. Specifically, we were focusing in on the petition of the Lord's Prayer where we pray,

"Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."

To bring the learning home, one of the exercises we shared in was that of remaking a video. We viewed this short clip of "Signs of Forgiveness," we handed out cardboard and markers, and we asked them to make their own signs. Then in their small groups they filmed themselves with their signs, emulating what they had seen in the video. Only, of course, what they wrote on their signs was personal for each of them.

It went pretty well. The conversations were meaningful and thoughtful. Yes, some of them took it more seriously than others. To be sure, as you can imagine, some took it so seriously they found they could not fully participate, for their pain was too fresh.

I have to say I was knocked over when I walked in to observe our 7th graders. One had scrawled on his sign,

"You told me I ought to kill myself."

And then he flipped it over,

"But I forgive you." 

And oh, isn't it so that we need to love each other now more than ever?

For well do I remember Junior High. I remember the terror that reigned when a couple 12-year-old girls in my class made it sport to visit me at my locker every day and threaten me with physical harm. Worst of all, I suppose, I remember what it felt like to feel as though I had no friends. Indeed, if anyone else saw this play out day after day, they certainly did not step in. I, for one, never told a single solitary person. I suppose that was the ethos even then.  You simply didn't tell.

This was more than forty years ago. It was more than tough out there then. And without a doubt, I expect it is that much tougher today. And yet, even with all of that, I know I was profoundly fortunate. For while I did not tell, I still had people at home who loved me. And there was a cadre of other caring adults watching out for me in other ways who carried me through until it got easier.

Now, maybe it is just simply harder for kids, for they cannot control who they spend their time with as much as adults sometimes can. And maybe not. Perhaps the suffering we too often inflict on each other is just more subtle than it was when we were in middle school. And maybe not.

Either way, I responded on Sunday night by talking to our kids about bullying. I spoke of my own experience at the hands of a couple of my classmates. Yes, I spoke about taking the long view --- for these decades later it is clear that I more than survived. While it felt like it would never end then, 7th grade did not last forever. More than that, I talked about how they might take care of and look out for and stand with each other out there in the world. And about how one of the ways we do that if we can see no other way is to tell someone who can help. We brainstormed for a moment about who we should tell should it happen to us. Mostly, I simply wondered with them about how we might be called to love each other. Even if we are not especially friends outside of church.

Will they? I have no idea. Indeed, do any of us ever really do this well? I have to say, I don't always know. And yet, I do know it is what Jesus calls us to now. To Love Each Other.

And I know this, too. This calls for more than an impromptu response to a group of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. We need to talk about what it looks like to love each other over and over again. More than that, these are words which need to be backed up by concrete action: demonstrating the kind of patient, enduring love which Jesus calls us to. And which Jesus offered first.

It takes energy, attention, resources and more. And yet it is more than worth it. For from what I hear in today's Gospel, this is all that matters: It is everything. It is what will enable us to keep on and it will be our most enduring witness to the world.

For 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, yes. And for all the rest of us, too. For you know this as well or better than I: too often, congregations, followers of Jesus today, are known for how we do NOT love each other --- for how we inflict pain on one another. And so I wonder now:

What would it look like for God's people to change that? How might we love one another on Sunday mornings and Tuesday afternoons and Thursday mornings?  In the workplace, in our neighborhoods, at school, at the ball field? How can we begin to love each other even better than we have before? Even if we are not especially friends with each other. Even then. Especially then.

I have said this more times than I can count. This world we live in has far too few examples of what love looks like: especially across our differences. Indeed, it matters more than ever that we are given the chance to let the world know who we are in this way: As We Have Love For One Another. This more than anything else will bear witness to who we are. Because of who Jesus was and who Jesus is for us still.

• It is easy to come up with examples of what loving one another does not look like. Can  you think of concrete examples of what it looks like for followers of Jesus to love one another? How might that preach?

• While God's people are always called to care for those who are not part of the community, we are also called to care for one another. It is tough out there. What does it look like for us to love each other in the world so that the world might indeed recognize the One we follow?

• According to Jesus today, it would appear that acts of love bear a stronger witness than 'correct theology' or to use an old cliche, "They won't care how much you know until they know how much you care." Can  you think of times when this has been true, even or especially across theological, political, social, or economic differences? What did that look like?   

Loving One Another

John 13:31-35

I was standing in a hospital room many years ago now.  It was during one of a dozen such stays after my dad's first heart surgery.  A group of friends from his church had come to see him.  As I remember it, they stood awkwardly around his hospital bed, fumbling for words to say.  Pretty soon, one of them offered to pray and once he was done, they did not take long to head for home.

This was a kind group of people.  They had traveled out of their way to make this visit and they had to coordinate their schedules to do so.  Still, they stumbled as they spoke, clearly uncomfortable seeing my normally gregarious dad hooked up to all kinds of tubes and wires and looking so very discouraged. They were not terribly good at it, I have to say, but I quickly learned that it didn't much matter.  For no sooner had they left his room than my dad turned to me and speaking with great conviction he said, "Anyone who doesn't have a church home is stupid."

To be sure, usually he was a little more eloquent than that.  And as you can well imagine, I would hesitate to use his verbiage as a tag line in my congregation's outreach effort, for I can't imagine it would attract many who are not already here.  Still, he was at the point in his life when he wasn't mincing words. And he meant what he said.  For he had experienced over and over again what love looks like in the company of God's people. The kind of love that shares time, resources, hopes, and prayers.  Love lived out through the sort of folks who, though far from perfect, often did what they could to build up, to support, to simply walk alongside.  People who try to live the kind of love that Jesus points to in our Gospel lesson for today. My dad had given and received this over and over again and he could not understand why everyone wouldn't go and find that, too, given half a chance.

Oh, I realize, of course, that my dad may have been more fortunate than many.  I know that there are times when you and I as God's people do not live up to that expectation to love one another which Jesus so clearly lays out for us today.  Although, I would venture to guess that as often as not it is not because we do not care.  And it may not be because we do not want to.  Rather, I think we often hesitate to share that love because we are afraid we won't do it right.  Or it won't be enough. Or that we will intrude where we might not be welcome.

We have not all experienced loving one another as Jesus would have us, of course, but I am grateful to have known the gift my dad's words point to my whole life long.  I would offer you now a couple of examples lived out by one congregation when I needed it most.

The first followed my journey home from the hospital on a January morning.  My dad had died late the night before, you see, and I had to head home on a Sunday morning to get funeral clothes before going back up to my hometown in time to meet at the funeral home later that day.  I tried to time it right, for I was exhausted --- we had kept the vigil for three weeks by then --- I tried to time it right for I really didn't want to see anyone from my congregation there --- I only just wanted to sneak in and out again.  My home was right across the street from the church though and sure enough, although most everyone had headed home with the hour approaching noon, one had not.  As I stepped out of my car another car pulled up behind me and Marie got out, walked over to me, and hugged me.  I don't remember if she said a single word, but I've never forgotten it, her kind gesture of love.

The word came to me in the days that followed that the neighboring pastor who had stepped in for me that Sunday morning had gotten the call at 6 a.m. saying our vigil had ended.  Sometime between then and our 9 a.m. service he rewrote his sermon to offer words of wisdom on how to care for a pastor who is grieving.  Truth be told, he was not known as a polished preacher, but I will tell the story of how he showed love for me and for my congregation my whole life long.

By the next Sunday I was back in the pulpit.  I could have used a little more time, but I had unexpectedly been gone three weeks already and knew I needed to get back at it.  Still, I have never forgotten the kindness of the people there in those first weeks back with them  --- and have often shared how they never questioned the time I took to be where I knew I had to be.  They only just loved me through it all.

As I said, I am so very grateful to have experienced the love of God's people --- particularly in a time when I needed to receive it most of all.  It is worth wondering now, it seems to me, how we can be more and more that way so that, in fact, more and more the world  "would know that we are disciples of Jesus, as we have love for one another."

I know I am not speaking here to those myriad congregations which are torn apart by something that bears no resemblance to love at all.  Still, I wonder if we all just took that first step and in love walked into a hospital room which holds a friend, stopped our car to hug someone who is grieving, changed our words to meet the needs of our listeners, and saw one another in all our humanness and only wanted good for them -- even if there was some cost to us ourselves....Wouldn't that begin to change even those places which have become marked by avoidance, by anger, by fear, and yes, even by hurtful violence of words and sometimes actions?   Oh, I have to believe that even our stumbling, fumbling, hesitant reaching out in love to one another can begin to change everything for somehow God takes it then and makes it something more...  Indeed, wouldn't it be something if one day along with my dad all the world could not imagine a life without God's people to care for us? Wouldn't that be something?

• When and where have you experienced the love of God's people as testimony to our shared faith in Jesus?
• When and where in have you seen a faith community living this love as witness to the One whom they are called to follow?  What is their story?
• In those places where it is not so, what needs to change to make it so?  Where might that change begin?