May 19th 2019 The Elephant in the Room Jn 13: 31-35

It is almost 6 years that I have been with you now. The time seems to have flown by. Most of you here have known each other much longer than that. I grew up in Montreal, lived at the same address for almost all of that time. Yet when I left home I still did not know about half the neighbours on my street block. When you grow up in the city you are surrounded by strangers. You are less likely to know all your neighbours and even less likely to know their family histories. It’s easy enough to be superficially friendly and polite, but often times you never get to know people well enough to call it a relationship. Here in town of Ayers Cliff / Magog where many of us have been here for generations relationships also go back generations and that is where the hard work begins.

In today’s scripture Jesus reminds us that the most important thing we can do is to love one another, as friends, as neighbours, as life partners. Yet do we really know what that means? It seems to me that there are many times I have seen love gone bad. Jealousy, thinking we know best and a desire for control…… often masquerade as love. The uprush of feelings involved in first love masquerades as true love. In Christian circles a haste to reach for forgiveness can masquerade as love. Jesus tells the disciples to love one another as he has loved them, that they will be recognized as his followers if they love in this way. Surely this must not mean to love one another in any old way. Surely this must mean that we should guard against not only hatred, but also loving badly.

To love one another – this is a deceptively simple statement- so simple that as Christians we have gotten sidetracked for centuries on what it means to be a believer. We have tried to pin down the nature of Christian beliefs in creeds and doctrines and scholarly theses. We have argued about the nature of Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit. Today’s passage talks about the glorification of God in Jesus and God in God’s self. This is a good example of the kinds of text that have theologians speculating, even arguing- trying to get this right – trying to make sure our beliefs are consistent and valid. So much energy goes into theological reasoning and what true Christians should believe, that it is easy to disregard the one definition Jesus gave. This one, simple statement is the elephant in the room – Love one another – not badly – we all probably know how to love badly – love one another well – as I have loved you.

What do I mean by loving badly? If you have ever been loved badly, you may have learned that you must earn affection. In order to be cared for and nurtured you may have had to perform and impress. You may have had to measure up to certain standards of behaviour. You might have learned to be afraid of trying new things. Life can become very tight and controlled and restraining in this kind of love, full of fears and insecurities. Life can feel unsafe. If you have ever been loved well, you know that to have the love of someone else is to feel special in their eyes, to be cared for and nurtured, to feel safe, to feel accepted exactly as you are, to feel encouraged to try new things, to not be afraid of life. There is a kind of expansiveness about this kind of love. We may receive this kind of love from people playing many different roles in our lives: parents, friends, siblings, teachers, romantic partners. To know this kind of love is to know that someone has your back, someone truly cares about you, no matter what fix you get yourself into. It is rare that we feel well loved all the time, but even fleeting experiences of this kind of love can have great effect upon us.

To love someone well is hard work. To love well is an ongoing spiritual practice that Jesus calls all followers to. When we look at how Jesus loved, we see that he did not withdraw his affection even from those who would do him harm. Today’s scripture passage at the Last Supper, takes place just after Judas has gone off to betray Jesus- yet we do not get the impression Jesus now recognizes him as his arch enemy! This is not to say that Jesus is all meek and mild as we sometimes interpret his love. He overturns the tables in the synagogue (John 2:15). And is particularly fiery in his critique of the Pharisees, calling them hypocrites. (Mt) Yet he maintains his relationship with them, dining with one, befriending another. Jesus is not exclusive in his care for others. He expands his mission to include non – Jews when he heals the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman. In all these ways we see Jesus practicing his love. It is all inclusive, it is sometimes critical. It never outright rejects. It maintains relationship. To love well is to give second chances, yet to also speak our truth.

Over the years in my work in ministry I have witnessed some pretty horrible family situations: children go to school without breakfast, family life involves a lot of drinking and fighting, able-bodied parents who are dispirited and on welfare. And what I have learned, in a lot of these situations, is that the parents themselves are fighting demons from the past. They are trying to deal, as best they can, with the legacy of their own childhoods where they were abused and mistreated, where they were loved badly. Like many other human characteristics, loving badly is contagious. If we have been loved badly we are more likely to repeat the same. It then becomes our adult task to break the cycle and to learn firstly how to love ourselves as we would have liked our parents to have done. Loving badly is contagious, but so is loving well. If you have been loved in a way that created an expansive, joy for living inside you then you have been loved as Jesus loved. It is a kind of love that makes you more generous in return. This kind of love encourages us to try new things, to not be shy to speak up, to put forward our ideas for a better world together. It is a kind of love that nurtures the ideas and hopes of others. This kind of love can be hard work for it asks us to always be slow to condemn, quick to give the benefit of the doubt. It is a love that asks us to see the good in those we find despicable. It is a love that never gives up or rejects others as nonredeemable.

“Love one another as I have loved you” – Jesus tells us. It is the hardest spiritual practice we can ever embark upon. Let us not get ourselves so involved in working out our beliefs that we lose sight of this primary task we have before us as Christians and as citizens of this world. May God’s spirit accompany us all our days, nudging us to be more loving, urging us to find our voice, encouraging us to claim our place as God’s beloved children. Amen.