The funeral’s over.

The intimate circle of family and friends gathers, and the conversation turns to remembering…

In the post-mortem, recollected snippets of conversations, actions, experiences, take on a special significance, understood now through the filter of death.

So, too, in this season of resurrection. As Jesus’ followers, we are remembering… Suddenly Jesus’ life and teachings are taking on new importance, new meaning, as we look back and remember in the light of his crucifixion, his resurrection, our present knowledge.

"Remember: Judas had just left?" one says.

Judas, the one we know was leaving to betray our friend and leader.

Judas, the one we know that Jesus already knew was going to betray him.

The muttering starts, becoming a groundswell of anger at the mention of Judas’ name.

Judas, the betrayer.

How could he?!

In the midst of our muttering, we begin to remember the events of that last supper, and our focus shifts from anger toward Judas to an attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible, to make sense of the events of that whole evening:

"Remember – right after Judas left – Jesus had to know where Judas was going, what he was doing! Why did he let him get away with it?! Why didn’t he try to stop him? Or at least ask us to do something about it? We certainly out-numbered him! And Peter, here, is big enough to have stopped him by himself! Why let him go?!"

"Or, at the very least – why not flee? Get out of Jerusalem? Go into hiding?"

"He didn’t even ask us to get even! Wouldn’t you think he would have wanted some sort of revenge?! I mean, he thought Judas was his friend!"

"Yeah, but after Judas left Jesus just kept on talking to us… like he wasn’t even afraid! Maybe he didn’t really believe something was going to happen…"

"Oh, I think he knew something was going to happen all right. Remember how intense he was? Like he wanted us to teach us something, have us understand something really important before it was too late? Something he wanted to make sure we’d remember?"

Something he wanted to make sure we’d remember…

What was it?

Do we remember?

What did Jesus say that night that was so important?

Do you suppose that meant Judas, too?

"…that you love one another…" Jesus said.

"One another… that’s pretty much everybody. Guess it would have to include Judas…"

"Yeah – but don’t you think ‘one another’ means only those who also love you? Judas’ actions certainly don’t seem like he loves us!"

And so the discussion continues, as we wrestle with just what it means to "love," just what Jesus was commanding us to do.

It’s a tough commandment.

Let’s listen to it again:

In the midst of the crisis that will lead to his death, Jesus speaks of love.

"As I have loved you," Jesus says.

Not conditionally – not, "love only those who will love you."

But universally: it is the signature behavior for followers of Jesus.

It is the one thing we do which identifies us as Jesus’ disciples.

And we do it so poorly!

Oh, we can say the words easily enough – when it comes to chocolate and movies and shoes and roller coaster rides.

But that’s clearly not what Jesus means.

Love, as Jesus speaks of it, is always something we do. And this is what, every time, distinguishes love from sentimental feelings or mere good intentions. (Synthesis)

Love is something we do.

Or don’t do.

Because it is where we also fail so miserably: that "having love for one another." Not simply doing lip-service to the commandment, but really living it.

What’s so hard, I ask myself? What gets in the way of our loving one another?

Fear, I think.

It’s well-and-good in the abstract to have love for one another, even one’s enemies, but up close and personal – when someone attacks someone we love, when we are betrayed by someone we trust – love is among the first casualties.

The fight-or-flight response is alive and well in us, whether we’re Peter drawing his sword to slice off an ear in the Garden of Gesthemane or the disciples fleeing the scene of the crucifixion and hiding behind the locked doors of an Upper Room.

I don’t think our failure to love is because we don’t want to love.

I think it’s often that our love gets lost in other things, and we delude ourselves into feeling safer by building walls instead of bridges, and then fortifying them.

Just as the medieval world envisioned dragons and sea serpents nibbling at the edges of their flat world – and, indeed, depicted them on their navigational maps! – we, too, have our own dragons and sea serpents nibbling at the edges of our interior geographies: demons which are all variations on fear, in whatever form – or forms! – they take: fear of failure; fear of not having enough; fear of being different, or of those who are different; fear of being hurt; fear of being wrong, fear for our safety, fear of rejection, fear of the unknown, fear however it manifests itself…

So much of our lives are fear-driven!

Fear confines us more powerfully than prisons.

It shapes us more profoundly than anything – except love.

And it is exactly that love of which Jesus speaks in this most important last conversation.

We are to shape ourselves into his followers by loving as he has loved us.

I read of a stunning example of that disciple-love in an account of a church youth group (at a Symposium on Youth Ministry and Spirituality, June 3, 2004), discussing how 9/11 had affected their relationship with God. Like so many of us, the participants in the group were struggling with how to respond to the horror of what had happened that day, and talking about the impact on their lives. One participant said he had not been able to pray since that event, since he assumed that many of the people in those planes and buildings were praying that God would spare them, and their prayers weren’t answered. Another said he couldn’t pray for a different reason: he assumed the terrorists were praying to Allah for courage to follow through on their plans, and their prayers were answered. However, the group also included a young woman who said that she was still praying. Because she is an artist, she tends to pray with images, she said, and in her images the victims and the perpetrators of 9/11 are sitting around a table in heaven, trying to figure out together what happened on that day.

There, I think, is an example of the love of which Jesus was talking.

There is a young woman who is a disciple of Jesus.

We all want to be followers of Jesus – here, in our heads. How do we help our hearts give up the fear that so often controls our behavior, and love?

What’s the secret?

I think the desire to love is an important first step: the desire to love in such a way that we are recognizable as followers of Jesus.

And then what?

I’m reminded of a story about the interaction between an old wood carver who was whittling a dog, and an awestruck young admirer, eager to learn the art.

"How do you do that?!" he asked eagerly.

The woodcarver replied, "It’s easy. You just pick up a piece of wood and carve off everything that doesn’t look like a dog."

How do we love?

We just get rid of all those behaviors that don’t look like love.

Easy? No.

Do-able? Yes.

Especially with practice.

And especially recognizing that we don’t have to do it alone – that we do it in conjunction with our relationship with God and within a community that supports us.

And so today, let us begin by becoming conscious of ourselves, our own behaviors.

And, as we recognize those things which do not look like love, let us get rid of them, whittle them away, until what we have left is indeed that love which identifies each of us as a disciple of Jesus.

Amen.