Episcopal Church of the Messiah

Worship Service Sermons

April 27, 2008

 The Reverend Carolyn Estrada

You in me and I in you and I in my Father…

I love my Father and he loves me and I love you and you love each other and you love me and you love my Father and he loves you…

Sometimes John’s circular reasoning can be annoying.. He seems to toss the term "love" around and it feels like so many gnats, biting at one’s face and I want to bat them away and say, "Okay, get to the point."

I forget that love IS the point.

Maybe it’s repeated so often – picking at us, trying to get our attention – because so often we don’t "get it"?!

We dismiss it as trite. Or obvious. Or superficial.

Often, hearing John, I feel like I’m being treated like a child, and I’m irritated at being told something I already know:

I know! I know! I know!

But I’m being told because what I know hasn’t yet informed my behavior.

I still haven’t taken out the trash; or used my table manners, or done my homework, or put away my clothes or loved even as I am loved….

Or, I’ve done so only when reminded, and then resentfully, muttering under my breath: "I know, I know, I know…"

I’m reminded that someone once said of the Fourth Gospel: "It is a book in which a child can wade and an elephant can swim."

Maybe I’m irritated at being caught in the shallow waters, having to wade like a child – and I haven’t yet discovered my ability to swim in the depths!

And so today Jesus reminds us again:

Those who keep my commandments – that is, love of God and love of neighbor – are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them…

I think one of the reasons we have such a hard time with all of John’s "love language" is that love for us has moved out of the domain of relationships, and into the realm of the commonplace. We often use "love" to indicate a preference: we love popcorn, or movies, or a certain color, t.v. show, city, outfit… It is a means of setting something apart, over and against other, similar items, and is used to "define against." My love of blue instead of green, my love of popcorn instead of peanuts, my love of jazz instead of rock, of Chicago instead of San Francisco… The unifying "love" of Jesus, tying us to one another and to the Father, has become an expression of difference in value: this, better than that.

Mike Murdoch, writer for The Door magazine, has poked fun at what he calls the "all-over-the-waterfront" and often confused Christian message: "Jesus taught that we must become like children as small as mustard seeds that grow up and give away all their fruit to the poor until they fit through the eye of a needle so that their father will graciously welcome them home and kill the fatted goat that has been separated from the sheep which the good shepherd was looking for but was unable to find among the lost sheep of Israel and so he found a coin which he paid to the innkeeper and so there was great rejoicing in heaven for the lawyer who loved God and his neighbor and had faith the size of a camel."

Yes, an all-over-the-waterfront and confused Christian message – if you focus on the multiple and divers images we’ve been given to communicate that message.

But if we look at the underlying message, the message behind these diverse images, we find they are all used to express love; not a love that evaluates and separates: I prefer mustard seeds to fig; camels to goats, lawyers to innkeepers, children to adults… But a love that unites. In each of Jesus’ parables, whatever images he uses, his message is about how love binds us all together.

Jesus has been trying to teach us what it means to Love…

And no wonder: Love is the way that Jesus comes to us so that, as he is quoted in this morning’s lesson, we are not left orphaned.

Love is the way that Jesus will continue to live, alive in us, as our lives show his love.

Ron Rolheiser reminds us: "A theist believes in a God in heaven whereas a Christian believes in a God in heaven who is physically present on this earth inside of human beings… God is still present, as physical and as real today as God was in the historical Jesus. God still has skin, human skin, and physically walks on earth just as Jesus did."

There’s our challenge.

There’s the message to which those pesky gnats, picking at us in John’s repetitious "love litany" are trying to call our attention.

There’s the message that takes us from information to transformation, from wading in the shallow waters of the Good News to swimming in the depths of Jesus’ message: God still has skin, human skin, and physically walks on earth just as Jesus did.

Can we see in these words the mandate to bear the love of Christ with us, in our lives, in our bodies, in our speech?

Isn’t that what our faith is all about?

Etta, a character is Janet Perry’s new book, What the Thunder Said, remarks: "I don’t know anything for sure except that there’s no use for a faith to make me ready for the life to come when what I always stood in need of was a faith to make me better fit for this one."

Isn’t that what Love provides?

An old Jewish folk tale tells us that when God was creating the world, it shattered into bizillions of pieces. Our job on this earth is to gather up those broken parts, those different, broken parts, beloved all, not one preferred over another, and, in so doing, restore wholeness to the world.

Isn’t that what Love does?

And rabbi and author Jonathan Sacks (p. 54 – The Dignity of Difference) tells us: "We discover God’s image in ourself by discerning it in another. God lives in the INBETWEEN that joins self to self through an act of covenantal kindness.

Isn’t that Love?

Maybe the feeling of being assaulted by "love gnats" does get our attention when indeed we need to pay attention!

But another, gentler, image also comes to mind for me: sometimes "love" is used so often, in such a compressed space – I love my Father and he loves me and I love you and you love each other and you love me and you love my Father and he loves you – that it feels like Jesus is blowing a dandelion. I can visualize all those "love seeds" floating into the air on his breath, scattering in ever-widening circles, landing, taking root, growing…

Love seeds, landing in you and me, growing… being blown again, seeding the world with love…

Today we are challenged to stop wading in the shallow waters of John’s Gospel, and dive deep into the waters of God’s love. We are challenged to trust that love to bear us up, to support us.

We are challenged to live that love, to share it, to let it inform our lives.

For so God is revealed to us.

Amen.