Go Love!
Sermon
The Lord Is Risen! He Is Risen Indeed! He Really Is!
Gospel Sermons For Lent/Easter
It's late. Let's get right to it. It was late that first Maundy Thursday. Too late. Too late for Jesus to do much of anything except send Judas off to do what he had to do. Jesus told him to get to it. Jesus said to him: "Do quickly what you have to do" (John 13:27 NRSV). "Judas, go quickly and do what you have to do" (John 13:27 CEV). It's late. Get to it.
My topic this evening is what this Maundy Thursday really is all about. Which is what being a Christian is all about. Which is, when you get right down to it, what life is all about. What Maundy Thursday is all about is not just what Judas did, but what Jesus said. Jesus' commandment: not just to be good or do good, though for some of us that would be a start; and not just to believe the right things, or pray the right words; not even just to get ourselves "saved," but to do as Jesus said, as Jesus commanded, as Jesus mandated (hence "Maundy Thursday," "Mandate Thursday.") It is about Jesus' mandate, Jesus' command: Do the one thing that's harder than anything else to do -- to love. "I am giving you a new commandment (said Jesus). You must love each other, just as I have loved you" (John 13:34 CEV).
C'mon, preacher, that's not hard! No? Then you tell me: Why did Jesus think he had to order us to do it? I know we love some of the people some of the time. But all of the people, all of the time, seems to be the standard Jesus sets. He wasn't saying, just "love the lovable," or even "love the likable." He just said love!
Jesus wasn't saying anything new to his disciples. They'd heard it before. Back when someone asked Jesus which of the Ten Commandments was the most important commandment, Jesus responded with the primary importance of all the commandments. God gave Moses ten. I've seen cartoons where Moses tries to negotiate and get God to give a little; perhaps knowing how little chance we have of keeping all of them, all of the time. Jesus said, ten too many? Fine! One commandment. One word. LOVE!
Not "like."
LOVE!
Not "look the other way." LOVE!
Not "let-well-enough-alone." LOVE!
Not the eleventh suggestion, but the first and foremost commandment: Thou shalt LOVE!
No choice.
No argument.
No debate.
No compromise.
No wiggle room. LOVE!
And not as Hollywood loves, but as God loves.
It's as though late on that last night with them before his death Jesus cut to the bottom-line for life and death and you and me. Before it's too late, he said: "Love one another!" Like it or not, it's the only way to live. The next day, Good Friday, a lack of love took his life. A lack of love will take your life away from you. Jesus came that you and I might have life. The way to have it is to love.
A few years ago our stewardship commitment slogan was the question: What does love require? That's the question you and I ought to be asking about now. What does Jesus mean when he commands us to "love"? He means what our celebration of Maundy Thursday has come to mean. Not the foot washing of John's Gospel, but what happened in the upper room during Jesus' last meal with his disciples before his death. He means communion with God and with one another.
We use different words to describe the different aspects of what we commonly call "communion." Those words describe what Jesus means by "love."
Love means "eucharist." Love means "communion." Love means "supper with the Lord."
Love means eucharist. That's an old word meaning "thanksgiving" or "to give thanks." Love requires thanks. Being "lovely" as a congregation means "both giving and accepting thanks." Being loving means being thankful -- responding to what God, and those who have been here and gone, and those who sit around us have done for us.
Think about it. You wouldn't be having this time of worship in this way and in this place if it weren't for all the people filling in the blank space around you. You're loved. Are you thankful?
Being loving also means being thankful to God. Somehow in recent generations we've lost that sense of God's providence that says there's something to thank God for. "I take care of me, thank you very much!" Do you really? Is there nothing to be thankful to God for? Self-made people often worship their maker but seldom love their maker. Love requires thanks -- to those around us and to the one who made and upholds us.
Love also requires being thanked. It's hard to feel loved when you don't feel appreciated. I don't do nearly enough of it, but do you know what I have consistently gotten the best response from in all the things I do in ministry? A two-line note that says "thank you." Thank you for helping out. Thank you for volunteering. Thank you for giving a little extra. Thank you for your kind words. I can't say I ever thanked anyone for their criticism, but I guess it couldn't hurt!
We gather around this Table every Sunday at first worship and about once-a-month at second worship, and every Maundy Thursday, just as we gather around a family table or a restaurant table every fourth Thursday of November to share bread, drink wine, and give thanks. Love requires it. Feeling loved requires it. Jesus told us to do it. Jesus did it. On this night we call Maundy Thursday, when he shared bread and wine with his disciples for the last time before his death, he took a piece of bread. He gave thanks. He said, "Take it." He took a cup of wine. He gave thanks. He said, "Take it!" Do this. And be thankful.
Do what? Just recollect he was here once? No. Be thankful he's here now with you and me.
Love also means "communion." Commonality. A sense of our oneness; a sharing in our wholeness. In Christ there is no east or west; no south or north. Even Lima is one. That is required for love to be. Loneliness does not make for feeling loved. "Communion" is a ritualized way of expressing togetherness, "community." It tells us we're not alone. We're in it together; and we'd better get it together or we'll never get it -- we'll never understand what love means.
In the Scriptures the Hebrew/Jewish people saw their calling as being set apart from the world. In a theological and practical sense they'd moved to the suburbs of life to escape the realities of the cities of life. They were God's people in a Godless world. And they felt pretty smug about it. Guess where Jesus sent them. "Go," (he said) "and make disciples of all nations..." (go into that world) "teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."
That's as clear a statement of the oneness of the world community as you'll ever get. And what are we told to go teach? What he commanded. Love!
Much as we in this country, like others in other countries, like to assume we have most favored nation status in heaven, what we really have is a question: "What is it love requires of you?" When he was President, George Bush said that love requires of us that we stand down our SAC bombers and destroy our weapons of destruction. One can almost hear Isaiah, the prophet of Israel: "... they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Isaiah 2:4). Is that so? Yes! When we learn what love requires. A Republican said so! And Jesus said so! (And those, by the way, are different!)
I've made no secret of the fact that my greatest frustration with my chosen community is our continuing lack of community and our seeming lack of understanding that it's required. That I cannot sit over here, and insist that you stay over there, and find communion and love -- which is what "community" is all about. There was a letter in The Lima News a while back with the headline: "Wanting Tax Isn't the Same as Needing It." That's the kind of thing we rightly decide at the polls. You can have my opinion on any of that stuff any time you want it. But I can say right up here that "wanting love is the same as needing it," and "wanting community is the same as needing it." Our town, our neighbors, we ourselves, need a lot of love.
The hymn says,"They'll know we are Christians by our love." Do they know by your love and mine?
I'm reading a book on marriage that has a lot to say about relationships between two people that can be translated for relationships between lots of people. It says that the things that make us angriest out there are really reflections of things "in here." Whatever Lima is, Lima is us! You and me! What does love mean? What would it mean for you and me truly to love this town? Let me suggest that our community requires the same thing our families and our church require. The same thing a communion requires: the presence of the Lord.
That's what "Lord's Supper" means: supper with the Lord. A Lord who is here. Not just "there" in our common memory, but here in our common life. I like to explain Communion for Protestants as being a gathering at the table where the Lord is not on the table but at the table. The Lord is host. The minister is hired help. If we're here thankfully and together, in Eucharist and Communion, the Lord is here at his supper. He's here with all the love we need, reminding us of all that love requires of you and me.
God loves to lift you and me from hell to heaven. From Good Friday to Easter morn.
Jesus told Judas to go and do what he had to do. Jesus tells you and me to go love.
