Acts 13:44-52

Psalm 145:1-9

Revelation 19:1,4-9

JOHN 13:31-35

“’Love one another as I have loved you.’”

When I was in seminary at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., we had a guest lecturer address us on what he called “the Ten Commandments for Biblical Preachers.” The lecturer was the Rev. Krister Stendahl, then Dean of Harvard Divinity School and a well-respected New Testament scholar, and later Bishop of Stockholm, which is definitely a big deal if you are, like him, a Swedish Lutheran.

Some of that lecture I can still remember without digging up my notes, including his “commandment” that “biblical preachers should never talk about ‘love’ unless the word appears in one of the biblical passages assigned for the day.” (This, I think, was his reaction against preachers whose first preaching option was always sentimentality.) Well, Bishop Stendahl, the word ‘love’ is in today’s Gospel, so I’m going to preach about love.

But the love which Jesus refers to in today’s Gospel is not what most English-speaking people think of when they use the word, namely romantic love (eros in Greek), which can indeed be a fabulous thing, as I would be delighted to expound upon – at another time. Today I’ll just say that while romantic love was created by God and, when expressed properly, is a wonderful gift of God, it is one of the Devil’s crafty wiles to try to convince people that it is the only kind of love which exists.

There are others, also created by God – like, for instance, friendship (philia in Greek), a splendid and under-appreciated kind of love which is an extraordinarily valuable part of life. Jesus does in one place call his disciples his “friends” – an awesome thing. But not here in this passage.

“’I give you a new commandment,’” Jesus says, ‘”that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another’” (emphasis added).

Wow. That means self-sacrificing love. Love even (and especially) when the other person is at his or her worst. That means through-thick-and-thin love. And it means love not just in some high-energy, heroic context but throughout mundane, ordinary life…which is as filled with temptations not to love as times of crisis are. In fact, I would argue that at least the beginning steps of the road to Hell are paved not “with good intentions” but with yielding to hundreds of temptations to petty evil and ignoring small opportunities to do good, temptations so petty and opportunities so seemingly small that we may not recognize either.

And Jesus says, “’love one another’”. His focus in this passage is on love within the Christian community, not “out there” in some vague way, and love in regular relationships, not just during heroic rescues. Love within the normal routines of Christian communities – like, say, churches.

Are we supposed to, say, love the guy who once again walked into the sanctuary without turning his cell phone off and once again let it ring all through the Prayers of the People? Are we supposed to love the couple who sit motionless in the sanctuary with a screaming baby in their laps? Are we supposed to love the healthy young woman who parks in a Senior Citizen’s parking spot in our parking lot – or worse, in a Handicapped Person parking space? Are we supposed to love the teenager who slumps in the back pew with (some would think) “attitude” written all over his face and a provocative T-Shirt on his back? Are we supposed to love the preacher who stands in the pulpit laughing at his own jokes and looking rather too pleased with himself?

Well, yes, actually, those are some of the kinds of people Jesus expects us to love. But love, let’s be clear, does not mean being endlessly permissive: that’s a smear the Devil is also working to spread around. In actual fact, love sometimes means saying “no”, a fact that one would wish that all parents (and many other people) instinctively knew, and love often means advising or “coaching” people, with patience and persistence, sometimes for years.

Love means committing oneself to other people for their good, for one’s own good, and in obedience to our Lord. Commit oneself to such imperfect people? Sure: what other kind of people are there except imperfect?

So, the temptation would be to ignore the kinds of behaviors I just mentioned – and to ignore the people who exhibit the behaviors, hoping perhaps that the behaviors would magically go away. Another temptation would be to complain to someone else about the behaviors – or even to try to chase away people who do petty, thoughtless things, which often are done in ways even more thoughtless or hurtful than the original offense. We have plenty of people who have come here, for example, because we think of ourselves as a “kid-friendly” church, apparently in contrast to some other churches.

So what might be “loving” ways to deal with these situations? Perhaps someone might say to the guy with the cell phone, “We all need to turn our cell phones to ‘vibrate’ or to ‘off’ when we’re in the sanctuary, so we can all focus on worship together.” The word “we” is important in that sentence. Someone could in a kindly way point out the existence of the Quiet Room, designed for small children who need to be there for a few minutes, or for the whole service, with their parent or parents, and even mention that we designed and built the room especially for people stuck in situations like this.

The vigorous young woman who parked in the wrong parking place might have her consciousness raised by an announcement by the rector that our next parish work day might involve adding more signs for Senior Citizen parking spaces – which is true, incidentally. Someone could greet the sulky-looking teen at the Peace or after the service with “Hey! Good to see you!” The person might get no visible reaction, or might get a little smile, or perhaps “thanks for noticing”, or just maybe, “I had a lousy week and I really needed to be here.” And there’s a classic approach for preachers who get full of themselves: just leave a slip of paper on the pulpit with the words “John 12:21” on it. That verse says, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

So, we’re supposed to commit ourselves to the annoying, the clueless, the detached, and the self-centered? That’s certainly good for a start. Christ sure did. And does: the most important reason any of us is sitting in this church today is that Christ committed himself to love us, and as part of that invited each of us to be here.

And Christ loves us, not just when we commit infractions of the rule of love like those I mentioned, but when we commit – or ignore -- much more serious sins. Again, Christ’s love doesn’t mean it’s O.K. for anybody to do whatever they want – not at all. Rather, Christ’s love means that he doesn’t give up on us – or anyone else. If we are supposed to love like he loved and loves us, that means love that is “pickup-truck tough” as well as “rose-petal tender” – sometimes at the same time.

Love can mean caring for a baby through a month of colic, even when you’ve lost so much sleep it’s wearing you out. Love can mean telling the truth to someone you care about, even though it would be so much easier to just ignore reality and let things slide, whatever the consequences. Love can mean promising a teen to pick them up anytime, any place, no questions asked, if they find themselves to be someplace they really don’t want to be and are scared to be – again – and call you, even if it would be tempting to say ‘I told you so’ and go back to sleep.

Love – this kind of love (agape in Greek), self-sacrificing love, love for when the going gets rough, is what I call “Four-Wheel-Drive Love”. That’s the kind of love God has for us. When people get a little or a lot off the road God has designed for us, a call to God can get “God’s Four-Wheel-Drive Tow Truck” to show up, to offer to pull the person back on the road (if they want to be), and to begin their healing as well.

Now I’m not talking about the old TV series “Touched by an Angel.” I’m talking about real life, in which real people may find themselves in the role of being one of “God’s tow-truck drivers” or “God’s EMTs” who comes along on the “tow truck”. Sometimes these people do pretty big things, like serve as a sponsor for someone who has just started a Recovery program like Alcoholics Anonymous, or to serve as a Foster Parent for a kid or kids who have, shall we say, not had great experiences so far being parented.

We have an opportunity for people to hear today, after the 10:30 service, about the serious need for foster parents in our state and what undertaking this challenging and potentially rewarding agape ministry would involve. However many members of this parish ultimately join those here who already are serving as foster parents – or who have adopted children born into challenging circumstances – there is a role for every last one of us in this ministry.

I was visiting one of our families with new foster children, and one of them screamed when I came to the door. The parents apologized, and explained that she was scared of strangers, which is understandable given that she was born in a “crack house” in Newark and probably saw some pretty scary strangers. So I was calm, quietly friendly and gave her space while I talked with her parents, and after a while she turned around, looked at me, flashed a thousand watt smile, toddled over to me, climbed up in my lap and gave me a hug. Her parents sat there with their mouths open and said, “she’s never done that before.” “I guess I’m not a stranger any more,” I said.

She is beginning to learn that not all strangers are scary, that some of them are just friends she hasn’t met yet. And one of the places she’s learning that is here, from us – all of us, not just me.

I’m not going to tell you her name, or how many other children we have here who may have experienced traumas – or how many adults, for that matter. And of course, there are those whose traumas I don’t know about. They – we – all need the kind of love Christ is talking about. So, just to make sure we don’t miss anyone who Christ wants us to love in the way he loves us, I have a simple – and challenging – proposal for each and every one of us: love everybody.

The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, New Jersey

May 6, 2007