CEaster5

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

Judas has left the building - just before Jesus turns to his disciples and says these words. 

It is the evening of the last supper. It is the night before he is betrayed. 

He washes their feet; says, do this. He breaks bread and pours out wine; says, do this.

And now he says, as I have loved you love one another.

I have been glorified, he says, and I will be glorified again. It has begun: the train of events that led from their last meal together to his words on the cross, "It is finished," as at last it is his body broken and his blood outpoured that are given. At last those precious gifts are shared and how he loves us is truly known. 

And now he says, now at this moment in our gospels, as I have loved you love one another. 

Wash the feet, break the bread, share the wine. Give over your lives. Stand fast when your companions, all those around you, flee for the hills. 

This is not a love as the world knows love. This is not how people conduct themselves. Look around you, at a small group or a large. Is the faculty bickering, fighting over who is really in charge? Is a leader putting himself forward as persecuted, grudging, inviting you to grudge, to persecute, to get your own?

They - the world, when you love as Christ loved - will look at you, you will look at each other, differently. 

And how is this even possible? In Christ - in the context of the Holy Spirit that he will send you. As we seek to be transformed into his likeness. 

People go to church…

… to pray

… to get connected

- to God

- to other people

… as a little solace, 

- a little laughter,

- a human touch in a lonely week.

People go to church for…

… encouragement

… connection

… support.

We are not doing this alone - this, life; this trying to follow Jesus.

We are there for others 

- help along the way

- companionship

in sorrow, grief

in joy

We are there

to be transformed into Christ likeness

not to ‘convert’ anybody

but to change ourselves

That kind of conversion - ongoing growth in faith and development as a person -  we can get behind. We can encourage each other.

What we are trying to do 

“just tryin’ to be a good Christian” - or a good human

is hard and we could use 

- a little help

- a little company

- a little guidance

… and that is where faith formation comes in.

Intentional faith development is our work together, to learn about and grow in faith. We the church offer opportunities for people of all ages and places in life, to study and learn…

… standard sounding things like Bible, church history, 

the meaning of mission, techniques and practices of prayer; 

and through them less obvious things like 

compassion, hope, community, listening, and 

what we can do together to express in our lives, 

in how we live, what we believe.

Simple ways we have taken through our lives: individual private prayer and Bible reading, studying the Bible together and discussing it and praying together, weekly Eucharist, annual retreats silent or guided, these are models and ways we grow, together, in faith.

Sharing faith is showing faith.

Showing faith is growing faith.

Living as if it is real - living as we do because it is real - gets us closer to Jesus, gets us farther on the way.

That is the kind of conversion we seek.

Some basic pointers:

Love one another

As I have loved you

Love God

Love your neighbor

the stranger

your enemies

Love creation - and take care of it, don’t wreck it!

and seek out ways you can learn, and teach, the patterns and pathways of faith,

and grow and develop as Christians,

as people who take responsibility, individually and together, for our own growth and development - in faith, in life, in understanding, in charity, in love —

Conversion is taking responsibility for an area of our own growth and development.

What does it means when we do this individually and together? How do we take responsibility for our own growth and development?

Everything is done differently in the light of Christ's love. Our giving becomes giving in joy, giving of the gifts he has shared with us. 

Our stewardship of the earth is caring for what we have received in Christ.

Our kindness to the stranger is welcoming her as we welcome Christ.

Our worship is in his presence. As we pass the bread and share the cup we remember: he is showing his love for us in these gifts, and as we share them and take them in, we remember his words:

This is my body. This is my blood. 

We become his people, his body in the world, and he becomes, even more, our God.

Acts 11:1-18

Revelation 21:1-6

John 13:31-35

Psalm 148

Judas has left the building

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

Judas has left the building - just before Jesus turns to his disciples and says these words. 

It is the evening of the last supper. It is the night before he is betrayed. 

He washes their feet; says, do this. He breaks bread and pours out wine; says, do this.

And now he says, as I have loved you love one another.

I have been glorified, he says, and I will be glorified again. It has begun: the train of events that led from their last meal together to his words on the cross, "It is finished," as at last it is his body broken and his blood outpoured that are given. At last those precious gifts are shared and how he loves us is truly known. 

And now he says, now at this moment in our gospels, as I have loved you love one another. 

Wash the feet, break the bread, share the wine. Give over your lives. Stand fast when your companions, all those around you, flee for the hills. 

This is not a love as the world knows love. This is not how people conduct themselves. Look around you, at a small group or a large. Is the faculty bickering, fighting over who is really in charge? Is a leader putting himself forward as persecuted, grudging, inviting you to grudge, to persecute, to get your own?

They will look at you, you will look at each other, differently. 

And how is this even possible? In Christ - in the context of the Holy Spirit that he will send you. As we seek to be transformed into his likeness. 

Conversion is taking responsibility for an area of our own growth and development.

What does it means when we do this individually and together? How do we take responsibility for our own growth and development?

Everything is done differently in the light of Christ's love. Our giving becomes giving in joy, giving of the gifts he has shared with us. 

Our stewardship of the earth is caring for what we have received in Christ.

Our kindness to the stranger is welcoming her as we welcome Christ.

Our worship is in his presence. As we pass the bread and share the cup we remember: he is showing his love for us in these gifts, and as we share them and take them in, we remember his words:

This is my body. This is my blood. 

We become his people, his body in the world, and he becomes, even more, our God.

• Acts 11:1-18
• Revelation 21:1-6
• John 13:31-35
• Psalm 148

taste of wine

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Psalm 116:1, 10-17 

 

Once when I was looking for an apartment in Brooklyn a friend introduced me to her landlord. He showed me the apartment, above his own family’s apartment, and then we all gathered for tea. They handed me a chocolate – it had a symbol on it. You don’t have to eat it, they said. It had no sugar! It was special candy for a special day in the Jewish year.

What day does the taste of bread and wine bring back to us?

The feast of the Lord’s Supper – the Last Supper – that Jesus took with his friends – gathered in an upstairs room for Passover night. The bitter herbs they tasted, and the other flavors, reminded them as Jews of an earlier meal: as it was meant to. It reminded them that the people of Israel freed from bondage in Egypt were called out: into a period of seeking and formation in the desert, while they learned what it meant to be God’s people – before they could enter the land and possess it, the land of promise, they had to become the people of promise, the people of hope. They had to learn and to practice what it meant to live God’s love – to love God whole-heartedly body and soul first and foremost, and to love their neighbors as themselves. They had to become the people who love.

Jesus renews this understanding and adds to it in the gospel passage we’ve read tonight: love one another as I have loved you. That is how they will know who you are. That is how they will know you are God’s people.

How has he loved us? Totally and completely. He has given his life that we might live in God. He has held nothing back.

As Robert J. Allen asks,

           

            Whoever ran out of love

            by loving too much?

            The more love you give,

            the more love you receive, and

            the more love you have to share.

Christ gave himself away completely, out of love – love for a world he knew needed changing – and through love comes change. (Sue Yeaney)

He was not afraid of change,

he was unafraid of death,

he had hope for the future

and trust in God.

[If he feared anything ever it was that he would fail to receive, falter in his love or his giving; but he did not fail.] He accepted on his shoulders the weight of the cross that he bore for all.

Innocent victim, unqualified scapegoat, he brought to an end the idea you could tag another person with your guilt or sin or suffering. He took all that on himself and removed it from us.

On this dark night,

there is nothing left to fear

but fear itself.

There is one source left for hope,

there is only one source

                                    of life,

                                    of light,

                                    of love, —

and it is the one in whom we find salvation,

the one we remember tonight: Jesus Christ the Lord.

Remember

            Love

Remember Love

                                    Do not be afraid

                                                to Change

Change for Love’s sake

Remember what lasts is love.

                                   

O Christ, we live in a world filled with suffering and death, but you call us to follow you and serve you. May your abundant mercy open our eyes to new ways we can create hope and opportunity for hungry people. Amen. 

(Lenten Prayers for Hungry People, Bread for the World, bread.org)

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Perfect love casts out fear. (1 John 4:18)

God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (1 John 4:15-21)

Be a Constant Source of Change

by Robert J. Allen

(Camaldolese Tidings, Vol. 18, No. 1, Spring 2012, New Camaldoli Hermitage, Big Sur, California)

     Why do people fear change? Because, as human beings, we are too attached.

     There are many different fears: the fear of death, which is inevitable; the fear of success, which is to be who we are capable of being; and the fear of public speaking, which means we are willing to share openly ... but I propose that most people think they fear change and do not want to change because they fear success. Notice I have not said they do not want change, but that they do not want to change.

     Change comes in all walks of life. We do not start out this way, but we are taught first by our parents, by example, then our friends, by associates, and then by our own selfishness to keep what we think is ours, thus avoiding change, forcing us right back to the fear of change and not realizing we are attracted to false security.

     Jesus Christ taught us just the opposite in the way He lived; by the things He said, and most of all by His love. If we would make all of our judgments based on "love one another as I have loved you," we would not only accept change, we would change and be a constant source of change.

     Change should only be feared when it is selfish, when it is self-serving, and when it leads or prevents real change. You cannot fear change unless you lack the virtue of Hope.

     In order to understand who you are, you should begin with the principle that all we have is a gift from God. This being true, then the only thing to fear is the inability to give to others by sharing, by making sacrifices, by loving. And to do this, to do it in an accountable and opportunistic way, means giving of yourself without an expected reward. This means change. Whoever ran out of love by loving too much? The more love you give the more love you receive, and the more love you have to share. The unexpected rewards are immeasurable.

     Christ came to change the world and He did this by giving Himself away totally so that each person could change. We will be judged not by how much we have, but how much we gave away; both materially and through love.

     Do not fear change, but fear the false security, that being neither hot nor cold, will forever be your judge.

* * *

"TO THE TABLES, EVERYBODY, AND STUFF YOURSELVES!"

CEaster5


In the Errol Flynn movie "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) Robin gives Maid Marian a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. He escorts her to table at a clearing in Sherwood Forest. The poor, hungry, downtrodden, miserable people have gathered there, and from the king's deer they prepare a meal in celebration of their already-but-not-yet liberation from the tyranny of the High Sheriff of Nottingham, Sir Guy of Gisbourne, and evil Prince John.

Spits turn, fires burn, and soon, all is ready. A great big man in a leather apron comes out to call everyone to eat:

"TO THE TABLES, EVERYBODY, AND STUFF YOURSELVES!"

Well. It isn't an exact parallel. They are, however, all sharing in the feast, high and low, rich and poor, alike.

What Paul had found at Corinth was different, and he admonished them:

For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you! (1 Corinthians 11:21-22)

Paul is calling the Corinthians back to a true sense of the banquet of the Lord. He is calling them back to Peter's vision. Peter - and Paul - perceived that at the feast of the true king, nobody was left out. In the new order of the ages established by Christ, we receive the Great Commandment, "love one another." (John 13:34)

They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love.

Peter learned that nothing is profane that God has made clean. All creatures, everyone and all things, praise the Lord. (Psalm 148)

All things praise him. What God has made clean, you shall not despise, but accept and make welcome.

In the peaceable Kingdom of Heaven, all share at the table and share alike (Acts 2): not gorging themselves in the presence of hunger.

Twenty-four years ago a Franciscan named Neal Flanagan taught a New Testament Theology class. He talked about Paul's observation, that in the peace of God, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)

Neal remarked that in the first century of our era, the Church dealt with the first distinction, between Jew and Gentile; in the 18th and 19th centuries, we confronted the second, liberty and slavery; and now we are dealing with the third. But Paul's list is not exhaustive. It may be that what we confront now is different.

As Martin Marty and Dean Baker have pointed out, each age has its own particular partial blindness. We look back on past ages and ask: how could they be so blind? Their prejudices look, in hindsight, quaint, absurd, and deeply tragic. But what will a future age see that we do not? What is our blind spot?

Peter had a vision: God gave Jews and Gentiles the same gift, "the repentance that leads to life." There goes that first prejudice. William Wilberforce, Frederick Douglass, John Newton, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the unnamed volunteers of the U.S. Colored Troops - all these opened eyes to the second prejudice, the discrimination between slave and free. And that blindness has begun to recede.

What is our blind spot? Could it be wealth and poverty, hunger and surfeit?

A hundred years from now, will anyone be able to comprehend the idea of sitting down for dinner without all being fed? Who are the hungry among us? Who is lacking sustenance?

Yes, spiritual as well as physical - but certainly physical. Jesus looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh." (Luke 6:20-21)

Have we been as blithe as the first Corinthians and happily opened our picnic baskets and lunch boxes, sharing them among themselves, not sharing with the uninvited - because unseen - poor: the poor who have nothing to bring to the potluck but themselves, their own creatureliness?

[At this point I hold up a bed sheet imprinted with a pattern of African game animals, both grazers and hunters.]

And yet behold this sheet! Imprinted on it not the face of Jesus but the animals of Peter's vision: Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds! (Psalm 148:10)

They are animals of Peter's vision - and ours, if our eyes are opened. All praise God - Jew and Greek, rich and poor, hungry and well fed, slave and free. All are to praise God: who are we that we could hinder God?

All are welcome at the Lord's Table. Come, eat, and be fortified for the living of the gospel.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:15-17)

Amen.


The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year C - RCL:
Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35

Holy Trinity, Willows
May 6, 2007
JRL+


Jon M. Walton, “Living by the Word: Dreaming in Joppa”, The Christian Century, April 17, 2007, Vol. 124, No. 8, p. 17.

But to get back to our hazelnut...

The Lord is gracious and full of compassion,
slow to anger and steadfast in kindness.
The Lord is loving to everyone,
and his compassion is over all his works.

Julian had a vision -- of God holding the world in the palm of her hand
as Julian would hold a hazelnut. There we all are -- saints, sinners,
mothers, daughters, rich, poor, -- all alike held in God's love.
Everyone, everything, we know and be and are, held together by God's love
-- and our love for one another.

This small cosmos of ours -- is all we know. And yet string theory --
I've been reading Scientific American -- implies that there's more. This
universe may be 13.7 billion years old, since the Big Bang, but there may
have been someting before that -- and other universes beyond it. We may
be one of an ultimate multiplicity of universes. Suddenly the picture
changes.

But to get back to our hazelnut,

Remember those Blue Diamond farmers on TV standing up to their chests in
a roomful of nuts? Our hazelnut is suddenly one of many, an infinite
roomful, with more pouring in all the time. And yet God still holds us in
the palm of hishand. -- And holds each ofus as of infinite worth. For all
that, he sent his son to live for us -- to kneel by the roadside and
touch a blind man's eye, to laugh at a wedding, cray at a funeral, be one
of us.

And we become one with him -- in his love. Each of us is of infinite
bvalue to God -- and he reminded us, too, love one another.

We are all together -- no man is an island, entire of itself; each is a
piece of the continent, a part of the mainland. If a clod should wash
away, Europe (our little island) is the less, as much as if a peak or a
promontory were -- and we all in our cloddish -- or peakish -- way hold
this continent together. -- We all _matter_ to God -- and we each matter
to the other.

We may not always see it out in the world, but sometimes we do in
microcosm -- a little world. For instance, in a church, or on a baseball
team, or in a jazz band, or at a square dance. When I was in DC I was on
a city rec league softball team. No uniforms. We mostly just showed. One
of us was a player/manager. He'd call us all together -- booked us with
the league, and brought the bag of equipment (bat, balls). And then he
played, I don't know, third base. (I was in right field.) We could play
whether he was there or not -- he could have someone else come with the
bat & ball if he couldn't make it -- but there we all were together, each
with a glove at our positions, or up to bat. Maybe our church is a little
like that.

Or maybe we're like Dave LeFebvre's jazz band -- called together, we show
for the gig with our instruments. When we play we have a basic tune --
and each of us gets a turn to step up and shine. It's the job of a good
jazz musician to make the others look good _ when they're playing. In a
jazz band -- or a bluegrass band -- or here.

And lastly our church may be like a dance. One fall evening in high
school a bunch of us from Gaithersburg piled into my 1967 International
Travelall and drove out to Barnestown. There was a square dance. The
eight of us wandered in the room at the crossroads church.

The other dancers welcomed us in, observed that there were enough of us
to make up our square, and got us started. The caller came over when he
could -- someone alerted him -- but it was the other dancers, mostly, who
showed us the moves. And we danced. We all danced. The dance went on
whether the caller was with us that moment to show us, or not.

And the dance goes on. Each of us is part of us loving one another,
laughing with each other, supporting one another in trial or
circumstance. All held together on this continent of love. This crazy
little hazelnut in the palm of God's hand.

St John's Episcopal Church, Lakeport, California
May 9, 2004 9.30am Holy Eucharist
Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year C
Acts 13.44-52 or Leviticus 19.1-2,9-18, Revelation 19.1,4-9 or Acts 13.44-52, Psalm 145 or 145.1-9, John 13.31-35