St. John’s United Church

“Living and Loving”

I have loved you, just as my Father has loved me.
So remain faithful to my love for you.
If you obey me, I will keep loving you,
just as my Father keeps loving me, because I have obeyed him.
I have told you this to make you as completely happy as I am.
Now I tell you to love each other, as I have loved you. (John 15:9-12)

I don’t know whether you’ve heard the joke about the woman and her husband who interrupted their vacation to go to the dentist. After waiting up front impatiently for a few minutes, they are called to an examining room. When the dentist enters the room, the woman is very direct: “I want a tooth pulled, and I don’t want any Novocain because I’m in a big hurry,” she said. “Just extract the tooth as quickly as possible, throw some gauze on it and we’ll be on our way.” The dentist was quite impressed. “You’re certainly a courageous woman,’ he said. “I don’t think I could have a tooth extracted without drugs, no matter how much of a hurry I was in. Which tooth is it?” The woman turns to her husband and says, “Show him your bad tooth, dear.” Oh, the perils of our relationships!

During the Easter Season, we’ve been reading from St. John’s gospel and today we read about that profound relationship between God, Jesus and the disciples — a relationship soaked in love and in joy and in friendship. Jesus says, “I love you just as the Father loves me” and “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete”. Then, he utters that immortal directive, “My commandment is this: ‘Love one another, just as I love you. The greatest love you can have for your friends is to give your life for them.” And then he tells them, “And you are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because servants do not know what their master is doing. Instead I call you friends.”

We should pause here and note how radical this language would have sounded to people who lived in an authoritarian, patriarchal culture; to people whose image of God was of the great lord and king above, who had spoken in the rumbling cloud of the volcano of Sinai and who now dwelt in dreadful silence behind the temple curtain. But today’s readings speak of a living relationship soaked in love, joy and friendship. How utterly radical!

Once on a military training exercise, the British divisional command radio operators were getting very bored on a quiet night, when a voice broke the radio silence and asked over the air “Are there any friendly bears listening?” After a moment’s disbelief, another voice replied “Yes, I’m a friendly bear,” and then another voice chimed in, “I’m a friendly bear too!” Over the next few minutes, many more responded until the duty officer at headquarters grabbed his microphone and let loose a blistering tirade at the operators for fooling around on an important radio link. When he had finished, there was silence for about ten seconds. Then a small voice said, “You’re not a very friendly bear, are you?”

This passage from John’s gospel speaks of a very different relationship than that between the officer and the radio operators! The heart of the Christian faith is this: that we are the beloved of God; that we are in a relationship with the Creator and all of creation which is soaked in love, joy and friendship. There is a voice that speaks to us from above and within, in a whisper and out loud, “You are my Beloved.” Our task is to recognize that in our own lives and to claim it for ourselves — and then, to pass it on to others. Henry Nouwen, that gentle and loving priest, once said that we can give this gift only insofar as we have claimed it ourselves. He asks, “Isn’t that what friendship is all about: giving to each other the gift of our Belovedness?”

Now, this “belovedness” of ours is not a snug and safe harbour where we can hide from the open sea of life. This belovedness of ours is not an insurance policy against life itself, but an embrace felt through joy and sorrow. The poet Kahlil Gibran once spoke of it like this:
“When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you, yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you, believe in him, though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth, so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches
that quiver in the sun,
so shall he descend to your roots and shake them
in their clinging to the earth.”

There are no easy answers in our sickness or in our health, in our life or in our death, in our success or in our disasters. But there is the voice, sometimes a whisper and sometimes aloud — that tells us we are the Beloved and reaches out to us in embrace. All these things, says the poet Gibran, love will do “so that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.”

As we come to recognize our belovedness in our own lives and claim it increasingly for ourselves, so we are enabled to turn to one another in compassion and understanding, and act towards one another in love. But again, as with the pain of life and death itself, so there is no safety in loving one another. There is no escape from vulnerability in loving one another. There is no guarantee against receiving hurt and pain from others. There is no safe and snug harbour from the open seas of relationship. There is only a choice between the tender pain of giving too much of ourselves and the tender pain of giving too little of ourselves.

To be a Christian - a follower of Jesus - means that there are some things for us that are not optional. A person who is a member of the Sierra Club is not a person who sets forest fires. A member of the Boy Scouts cannot be someone who refuses to build a campfire. It goes with the territory. Likewise, a disciple of Jesus is someone who, in every situation, tries to respond to other people as Jesus responded. ‘There may be certain responses to the world that, in the world’s eyes, “make sense,” or which can simply be justified by reference to “everyone else is doing it.” But Christians are those who, through baptism, have signed on, have publicly committed themselves to obey Jesus. And Jesus has commanded us to love. Whether our obedience to this command will make the world a better place, or lead to deeper human understanding, or help to win friends and influence people we don’t know. We only know, in today’s Scripture as well as so many other places in the New Testament, that this is clearly what Jesus commands us to do: “To love one another as Christ has loved us.”

A number of years ago, I went with a parishioner to the nursing home to see her mother, Ruth, also a member of the congregation. The disease, finally diagnosed as Alzheimer’s, had begun its inexorable journey some ten years before. I had known Ruth as she was when she was well: good humoured, a devoted choir member, active in church, a knitter of sweaters and baker of brownies. Then her memory took over her daily life. She more often spoke the French of her childhood and talked with people as though they lived on her father’s farm. The hurt in her family grew as she failed more and. more to recognize them. it became impossible to have her at home, and finally a place became available at the nursing home. There, living in her childhood memories, she chatters away in French, sings songs, and occasionally notices something that is happening around her. She doesn’t know who is there, but we feel better for going, and even though she may not connect us with herself, she clearly enjoys the company.

When we went on this particular day, Ruth was in bed. She was awake, and her daughter bent down and kissed her forehead and stroked her hair and talked to her. She answered in French, which her daughter didn’t understand. I knew enough to translate a little. Then the daughter started singing “Jesus loves me.” Ruth joined in, singing the English words clearly, with an occasional French pronunciation thrown in. But when they sang the chorus, “Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me,” Ruth made her own ending: “He always tells me so.” When we listened again, we heard that she consistently sang the whole song that way: “Jesus loves me this I know, because Jesus tells me so. . . . Yes, Jesus loves me, he always tells me so.” We left her singing in a variety of ranges, sometimes focusing on one syllable and repeating it over and over. But she would always be clear: “Yes, Jesus loves me. He always tells me so.”

When God’s love has made its home in our hearts, we can live the command Jesus gives us: “Love one another as I have loved you.” Sometimes this is the hardest part of God’s love. We sometimes wish God would just love us and everyone else without getting us involved in the whole process! But this love — this real, claiming, binding love — changes us in such a way that loving one another becomes as natural as breathing. We can love one another because God has loved us. We can love one another because in God’s love for us we learn to love ourselves.

Ruth knew all this. She sat in her chair, she lay in her bed, she relived her memories and talked about them in French. In the midst of all the confusion her illness brought, she continued to sing:
Jesus loves me, this I know, because Jesus tells me so.
Little ones to him belong, they are weak but he is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me, He always tells me so.

The good news of the gospel is that the same is true for us - for you and for me. And for that we can say, “Thanks be to God!” Amen and Amen.

Acknowledgements: Gary Botha

A meditation preached by the Rev. Myra Garvin at St. John’s United Church, Brockville
Sunday May 21, Easter 6B