Sometimes the simplest readings from our sacred texts are the most difficult to put into practice.
Today’s reading from John is a case in point.
Let me set the stage for this reading:
Jesus is at the end of his life—it is the first Holy Week—-the temple authorities are closing in, Judas has already betrayed him, the wheels are in motion—the shadow of death looms large.
In these final moments with his friends Jesus needs to get his point across, he needs to sum up his teachings, he needs his followers—those then and us now—-to get it.
So he gives a new commandment, a seemingly simple charge: Love. Love others as I have loved you.
Love everyone because I love everyone. I love Judas. I love Caiphas. I love Pilate. I love the thieves with whom I will be executed. I love you, all of you…those who will scatter and hide, those who will run and deny, those who will disappear and doubt. Those who will join the crowd and scream: Crucify Him!
Love everyone, Jesus says.
Why? ##
Because it’s the only way forward. Jesus knew the only way to change the course of history, the only way to change the world was in and through and by love.
So he gave us this new commandment:
Love everyone. Always. Everywhere. Change the world.
So simple and yet so profound.
So simple and yet so incredibly difficult.
So simple and yet so terrifying.
Loving as Jesus loved isn’t easy, but loving as Jesus loved is so very needed. Then, now, always. ###
Jesus loved his way through all of Judea, into Galilee and down to Jerusalem. He loved his way into the temple, out to the garden, up on the cross and down into the tomb.
And he tells us—-do the same. For when we love we change the world. When we love we change the course of history. When we love we turn darkness into light, evil into good, war into peace and hate into love.
Love everyone. Change the world. ###
My God how our world needs to be changed. The intolerance and hate that swirled about Jesus... the hate and intolerance that nailed Jesus to that cross? It’s alive and well….and thriving…most recently in Alabama most unceasingly in Washington DC. It’s everywhere, marching through every nook and cranny of our world…our country....our region...in every nook and cranny of our lives. Hate. Intolerance. Vitriol. Lies.
The antidote to it all is Love. The profound, risky, empire dismantling love of Jesus.
It is this love that Jesus commands us to live into. The risky love. The love that ticks off the status quo, the love that topples the patriarchy, the love that demands our children are safe in school, our LGBTQ siblings are safe on the street and our daughter’s bodies are safely under their singular control.
The love that stands up, the love that speaks out and the love that Will. Not. Stop.
My friends, today’s reading from John is simple: Love everyone. Always and Forever.
And my friends, today’s reading from John is difficult: Love everyone. Always and Forever.
Love is a simple concept and a difficult practice.
And it is our most holy and sacred task.
How do we do it? How do we love those we find unlovable, how do we love those who scare us, how do we love those who infuriate us, how do we love those who have hurt us? We just do it. Because, as Wendell Berry writes in today’s middle reading: “it may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.”
My friends, I believe we have come to our real work, I believe we have come to our real journey: it is the work of love, the journey of love. I invite us to receive the love God has for us and let it take us exactly where it is we need to go. For when we do that, when we ride the wave of God’s unceasing love, we can change this lost and hurting and increasingly dark world. This work, this journey, this task is ours to take, because if we don’t, who will?
Let us love. Boldly, wildly, fully. Let us love and let us save our world.
Amen.
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