Easter 6 Sermon

When I was younger, a friend of my mother’s was trapped in an abusive relationship. Her husband beat her, threatened her and her children, controlled her in terrible ways and made her life almost unbearable.

One evening I overheard my mother talking to this woman. My mother asked, “why do you stay?”

And her friend replied simply, “he says he loves me.”

There is probably no word more mis-used or mis-understood in the whole of the English language than ‘love.’ People ‘love’ chocolate (and I’m going to avoid pointing at my wife at this point!), they love sports, money, vacations in Mexico, their car, their hairstylist, and we all know that most men just love beer.

We also know that with a divorce rate approaching 50%, love for beer and chocolate is often considered far more important than love for one’s spouse. There are appreciation days for ‘beer lovers’ and ‘chocolate lovers’ and ‘shopaholics’ – “free love” was my the anthem of my mother’s generation, the Beatles sang “love is all you need” and there’s a sign outside a store I drove past the other day called “The Love Boutique” (I somehow don’t think that’s a therapy group).

But, interestingly enough, if someone hangs out a sign promoting ‘love for families’, or ‘support for families’ we risk being immediately labeled as exclusive, fundamentalist, misogynistic, or some combination of all three. Or maybe for a better example – because I know that most people have, to a complete stranger, proclaimed their love for something like a kind of music, an author, beer – next time, say to that stranger, I love Jesus, and watch the reaction that you get.

Yet even in our own ‘church world’ love seems a difficult goal to attain. I’ve been to many different churches, across denominational boundaries, and I see the same sin repeated as people treat the church of Jesus Christ worse than they would treat almost anyone else – withholding money, or time, or help as a form of punishment when they don’t agree with something, but still demanding inclusion, consideration, and care.

My school – Lutheran Theological Seminary Saskatoon – has borne the brunt of that, as people who still attend Lutheran churches and demand Lutheran pastors withdraw their support because they imagine the Seminary as a den of iniquity dedicated to teaching heresy.

On a broader note, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada is facing much shorter budgets as benevolence to the Synod has been stopped by many churches, often on the recommendation of their pastor as a means of punishing the national church.

At a synod event in Saskatoon I met a pastor who was actively encouraging other pastors and churches to stop giving. I’m curious, but believe first and foremost that people have a right to their own actions, so I asked him: “why?” And he replied to me that “I just love this church so much I hate to see it ruined, so I’m protesting the most effective way I think I can.”

I can’t fault that. Even I don’t always, agree with the national church – but I asked him if he realized that he was hurting poor people. “What?” he said. And I pointed out to him that those who get salaries still get paid – it’s the missionary and support programs that get cut, and in the Seminary it drives up our tuition costs and cuts student aid.

And because he was directly quizzing students as to how open they were to his position, I asked him a question of my own: “how do you expect to gain support from Seminary students when we’re the ones you punish because you’re upset?”

This is a never ending cycle, one that’s played itself out in most churches I’ve ever associated with, regardless of denominational affiliation. Love stops when money is involved – or vice versa, I’m not entirely certain which.

I think that’s because in our society, love, like money, is more often seen as a means of control or power than a giving relationship, so we associate the ‘love of God’ with some sort of ultimate power that the church can control.

Even in the Lutheran church, we’ve been guilty of promoting the kind of love that seeks control. After all, even in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells the apostles “if you keep my commandments, then you will abide in my love” – for generations pastors have pounded the pulpit to exhort people to love Jesus by living by his (church-interpreted) rules. We reap the harvest of that in massive quantities – empty pews, empty hearts. By trying to turn love into something that exists in the head – a doctrinal statement, a catechetical tool – the church authorities denied that love needs to exist in relationships, not only between individuals, but first and foremost between God and believers.

But it’s funny, because look at the first lesson for today, the story from Acts 10. There’s a small line there, simply that says “the circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues.” I’m going to let you in on a little-known fact: that anywhere in Scripture where you read the words astounded, amazed, or astonished, those are examples of God acting in our lives as God wants to act, not as we want God to act. If you actually wanted a more realistic translation, you could probably say that those believers were horrified that the Holy Spirit had been given to Gentiles.

In the reading from Acts the church is just a few days old, and it’s repeating a chorus that we still sing today: “even them? But they’re sitting in my pew! We don’t do things that way!” In the lesson for today, the very first members of that group are already composing their letter of protest to the council.

It’s tempting to view Peter’s exclamation as a rhetorical question, directed to no one in particular, but the truth is it’s directed at those smug, self-satisfied believers who protest at the Gentiles: “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people?” Peter opens up for the gentiles – those who were unclean (and remember, all of us here would be gentiles) the one commandment that Christ gave to him and the other disciples.

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

I think that part of the disconnect in our understanding of love as Christ preached it is that many Christians think that they are called simply to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and that when we achieve that belief, it somehow separates us from those who don’t. But as the philosopher (and, I might add, Lutheran) Soren Kierkegaard noted, “Christianity is not a doctrine to be taught, but a life to be lived.”

Every so often I encounter someone who feels apart from the church, who’s stopped coming because they’ve seen human relationships at work in the church. Astounding, I know. Human relationships that are illogical, often hurtful, occasionally self-centered and usually kept politely in the background until they simmer over.

“Aren’t we supposed to be better than this?” I’m asked. Another way I hear this is “Christ is good, but Christians are hypocrites”. It must be a beautiful gift to be holy, ‘cause it often seems to me that the holiest people are the ones who stay outside the church. My response, to everyone who feels that they’re disillusioned by the humanity they encounter in a church, is twofold. The first is to tell them to read the Acts of the Apostles. Because only a very optimistic person could read in Acts a portrait of a church without flaw, without bickering and infighting. The second thing I say is this: “if you don’t do this or ever act in that way, why are you not involved and trying to change it by modeling your way?”

In calling us to ‘love one another,’ Christ is challenging us to look beyond ourselves. And you know, when we do the results are astounding, because then God really does work in the world the way he wants to, and not the way we want him to.

For all the bad things and negativity we hear about, consider the amazing things that have been
done by those same groups of human believers (and you’d better believe there was a great deal of bickering at the time): ministering the victims of plague, building the first universal hospitals, the first universities, societies dedicated to the care of the sick, the suffering, and the dying – the list of amazing works of love that have been done by Christians far outstrip the negative that can be dug up.

We stumble when the resurrected Christ is worshipped, but not followed. Jesus called the disciples out of slavery or servanthood – committed to the ideas of serving a master and clinging to his every whim – and into abundant life as friends.

We follow Christ, but not Christ who stands aloof and powerful, dictating who goes where and when what should happen; but rather Christ who stands in our midst, calls us ‘friends’, and bids us to go forth into the world and show that world what love really is.

Not a sacrifice or life of drudgery or legalism or rules – because that is abuse, just as rampant in spiritual terms as in physical realities. Love used as a goad – as a means to get someone to change something that we don’t like – is not love at all. No one should serve out of fear.

But love – love as practiced by God, who loved the world so much that he gave his only Son – is joy. Love lived out is the resurrection, in which we are called to rejoice.
Live in joy – not because you choose to – but instead, because you are chosen to by Christ, who first loved you and took so much joy in your presence that he did, in fact, lay down his life for you.

Go, and bear fruit – fruit that will last because it is sown in grace and grown in joy, reaped in obedience and gathered in love. By that fruit, you show that you are truly friends.

Amen.