May 12 | “Love’s Divine” (Sermon – Easter 6, 2012)

I haven’t posted any of my other sermons here yet! This is actually from last year’s Easter 6, but it’s still about the Farewell Discourse so it kind of works, even though we read from Chapter 17 today, not 15.

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Director James Cameron, during an interview with National Geographic, described his journey to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean in the following words: “So here I am in the most remote place on planet earth, that’s taken all this time and energy and technology to reach, and I feel like the most solitary human being on the planet: completely cut off from humanity, no chance of rescue, in a place that no human eyes have ever seen. And my wife calls me. Which of course was very sweet, but let that be a lesson to all men: you think you can get away, but you cannot.”

This sounds funny to us, but let’s maybe take a moment to ponder this. Down, down, down, into the abyss we dive – an abyss that is likely familiar to many of us, an abyss with many names. The depths are no longer blue but black. The pressure is excruciating. There is no light or warmth – nothing that can sustain us but metaphorical “marine snow” that drifts down with agonizing slowness, long dead by the time it reaches us. In these depths there is little life. It’s barren sand as far as you can see – not that you can see. It’s silent. It might as well be nothing.

But still, you hear a voice. It’s a voice you know so well that your heart flashes briefly, like the last few seconds in the life of a lightbulb. The voice calls you by name. You think you can get away, but you cannot.

This is the nature of God’s love. If it frightens you, you’re doing it right. For us Cascadians, it might help to picture a mother Grizzly bear. This is a terrifying love – terrifying in its ferocity not against us, but against whatever seeks to limit or enslave life and light.

Now when we think of love in church, we might think of 1 Corinthians 13 (so popular at weddings), or “Jesus loves me.” Like last week’s sheep, it appears warm and fuzzy at first glance. And who’s to say that sometimes it isn’t? Check out those Hallmark Christmas cards with a pink-cheeked baby Jesus snuggled up in the hay, or blonde Jesus on the meadow with us, his fluffy white sheep. We’ve all felt that, I’m sure. But friends, it is so much more.

Chapter 15 of John, which we read from today, gives us a taste of this. Although we are in Eastertide now, this reading rewinds us a little bit. Chapter 15 is part of Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse” to his disciples – whom we learn today are no longer servants but friends, or “those who are loved.” This speech is spread out over several chapters, and its structure is like a sandwich, with Chapters 14 and 16 echoing each other to really highlight the importance – the meat – of Chapter 15. There are three very important issues at play in this chapter that I would like to draw attention to.

The first is that verses 9-17, which we read today, occur immediately after “I am the vine.” The community is given a metaphor which they should emulate. They are to be branches of the vine, bearing fruit for the vine-grower. Jesus gives them a clear idea of how they should look as a community after he is gone and what their relationship with him and God should be.

Second, Chapter 15 gives the disciples fairly clear instructions on how they will act once Jesus has returned to the Father. They are given a new commandment: to love one another, as Jesus has loved them. They are even told what the greatest love looks like: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. This is the new “Prime Directive” of the community.

Third, perhaps most important, is that this entire discourse, in a masterful piece of storytelling that lovers of John will recognize, happens at night. Ring your bells. And what’s more, Judas is not present at this point in the discourse. He is, at that moment, betraying Jesus to the religious authorities. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

This is a love that is beyond all fear. This is a love that the Rev’d Dr. Ellen Clark-King once referred to as “promiscuous.” I would push further and say this is a love that might even be a little reckless. It’s the love that the Sufi mystic Rabi’a spoke of as she walked the streets with a torch in one hand and a pail of water in the other in hopes of “put[ting] fire to paradise and pour[ing] water over hell so that these two veils disappear and it becomes plain who venerates God for love and not for fear of hell or hope for paradise.”  This love is impossible to escape. The darkness has no power in the inferno of this love. We know this because even at what we might dare to call God’s darkest hour, the light is shining – and speaking love.

Now, for many of us that call ourselves Christians today, these are good tidings. They might not be good news though. After all, if we’re here together now singing these songs and wishing each other peace and sharing this food, this isn’t news to us: we likely know at least something of this love. We might explain to a curious friend that it is out of this love that we are here today. But today, in a less than churchy world, we all know being church is about more than showing up on Sunday to this beautiful building and hugging our beautiful friends. I don’t know about you, but that makes me think, “Oh boy! There’s more?” There’s more than we can ask or imagine!

But what is it? How do we even respond to a love that lays down its life for its friends, or a love that shines in the darkness and is not overcome, a love that obeys the commandments of the beloved for joy instead of fear, a love that has done marvelous things, a love that will not withhold the water of baptism? Again – if this frightens you, or simply casts the great shadow of awe over you, you’re doing it right.

What will our response be? One person’s experience of God is as riotously different and individual as the call. Some hear a gentle “Follow me” and simply leave their fishing nets behind, walking without any fear into a radically new life. Some are met unexpectedly with joy – “I saw you under the fig tree!” Parishes too have different experiences and expressions of the Beloved. However we meet the Beloved on the road, remember: all of us will see greater things even than these. We will witness a love that breaks like the dawn, and we will be called – and empowered – to do the same. Again: how? If I may paraphrase our beloved: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” Ring your bells for ‘abide.’ It’s a word that signifies the presence of the luminous Beloved – Jesus “abides” with his friends for two days, just as Peter abides with the newly baptized, and the love of God abides with John’s community and with us. The commandments are to love one another as Jesus loves us. Of course that’s a tall order! But remember Jesus promises us the Holy Spirit to give us a hand. We don’t have to do it alone – and thank God for that, for if we did, we might burst into flame.

Now, we need to be honest with John for a moment. Writing in a time of great struggle for identity, the love he spoke of was in his mind to be proclaimed and lived only among the Johannine community. In the lectionary we skip the moments in the Farewell Discourse where Jesus tells the disciples they need to love each other because the world will hate them. It’s an attitude that, taken to extremes, can mire us in close-minded Fundamentalism. We are absolutely welcome and encouraged to remember that the first people we told about the Resurrection were our brothers and sisters in Christ – the disciples. I think today it’s more important than ever to remind each other that Jesus is risen – the light is shining and the darkness has not overcome it, even as we run out of money or don’t get along or quarrel over doctrine or properties. We need to remember to love each other as Jesus loved us. But this love is much too big to remain in these walls. Love sinks into the abyss and rises into space. But if we remember how quiet the voice can be in the abyss, then we are bound to spread the news of this rather scary love. The most beautiful part of this whole concept for me is that we never learn why we are loved! All we learn is that Jesus chose us – the world – to be loved. It is in this love that we have life.

For, if my favourite singer-songwriter Seal and you will permit me: “I need love. Love’s divine. Please forgive me now; I see that I’ve been blind. I need love – love is what I need to help me know my name.”

Amen.