May 15, 2022 St. Andrew Church Rev. Anne McAnelly
First Lesson: Acts 11:1-18
11 Now the apostles and the brothers and sisters who were in Judea heard that the gentiles had also accepted the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, 3 saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” 4 Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, 5 “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners, and it came close to me. 6 As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7 I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ 8 But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord, for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ 9 But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ 10 This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. 11 At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. 12 The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. 13 He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; 14 he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ 15 And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. 16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 17 If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” 18 When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
Second Lesson: John 13:31-35
31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. 32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. 33 Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ 34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Imagine a Peanuts cartoon. Lucy stands with her arms folded and a resolute expression on her face, while Charlie Brown pleads with her. “Lucy,” he says, “you must be more loving. The world needs love. Make this world a better place Lucy, by loving someone else.” At that Lucy whirls around angrily and Charlie goes flipping over backwards. “Look, you blockhead,” Lucy screams. “The world I love. It’s people I can’t stand!” I think sometimes we can identify with Lucy. It’s easy to love in the abstract — the world, people in general. We have no problem with that. It’s people around us that drive us crazy. And yet it is precisely those people around us, people nearest to us, with whom we work and go to school, neighbors next door, and the people we sit next to in church, that Jesus calls us to love. (Sermons.com, Lee Griess) Love One Another Charles Schultz sure knows our struggle with love. So does Jesus. He has just commanded his disciples to love one another. Something that feels strange even saying. How do you command someone to love?
Yet when we look at the context, we see that Jesus isn’t just talking about love he is doing it, then asking his disciples to do the same. You recall that John does not have a Last Supper, but instead Jesus washes the disciple’s feet. He wraps a towel around his waist and humbly washes their feet like a servant. Afterwards, Jesus foretells his betrayal and identifies who will betray him as Jesus dips bread into the cup and hands it to Judas, knowing that soon he will betray him. Right after our passage, Peter declares to Jesus his loyalty unto death. But we know how that goes, with Jesus telling Peter he will betray Jesus three times before the cock crows (13:38).
So when Jesus tells us to love one another he is not just talking about being kind when it suits us, or loving the people who are easy to love. No as one commentator notes, “Jesus demonstrates his love for the same disciples who will fail him miserably. Jesus washes and feeds Judas who will betray him, Peter who will deny him, and all the rest who will fail to stand by him in his hour of greatest distress. The love that Jesus demonstrates is certainly not based on the merit of the recipients, and Jesus commands his disciples to love others in the same way” (Working Preacher, Elisabeth Johnson). Someone once said, “We are judged by our actions, not our intentions. We may have a heart of gold, but then, so does a hard-boiled egg.” As a congregation of God’s people, we are called to care for one another, to set aside our preconceived notions of who is and who is not acceptable to God.” (sermons.com, Lee Griess) Love One Another
Judas leaves after being called out and Jesus starts talking about his glory. He speaks of being glorified and of glorifying God (John 13:31-32). In John glory signifies Jesus’ death on the cross. So before Jesus gives us a new commandment, he speaks of his gift of love, his dying on the cross to save us, and to love us beyond our situation. “For God so loved the world that he gave is only Son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life (3:16). Our love is a response to God’s sacrificial love, God’s inclusive love, God’s abundant love that we know through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Three things I want to focus on about love. Love is our ID badge. Love is Universal. Love even when it’s hard.
Love is our ID badge. Both my sons have ID badges. Cooper has one on the retractable wire to log in to the PAMF computers at Urgent Care. Parker has a badge that grants him entrance into people’s homes to install fiber optic phone lines for AT&T. ID badges help us know who someone is and to trust they are part of a larger system. I certainly would not let a stranger into my home without such a badge. So it is with Christians. The world knows us by our Love. Love is your ID Badge as a Christian. John writes, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (35). In Bible study we have been talking about evangelism and most of us feel like how we live our life is one of the best ways to let people see God’s love and Christ’s impact in our lives. It is our love for others that helps people know our love for God. We opened worship with “They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love”- an anthem of love – declaring our reason and hope for being the kind of loving people Jesus commands us to be; Jesus invites us to be after showing us his incredible depth of love!!!
Love is our Christian ID, but that does not mean we are better people for our love. Love is also Universal. Yes our Christian faith calls us to love and Jesus models profound love, but that does not make us superior. One commentator wrote, “We have to avoid here the thought that Christian love is loftier than that practiced by people of other faiths. Our love for others follows the example of Jesus of Nazareth, even as we acknowledge other love-models in other religions (Buddha, Mohammed, and Moses). We should not be in competition when it comes to love, nor should we make it an object of pride, but we should love concretely and share the burden of a hurting world with people of faith, no matter which one” (Working Preacher, Osvaldo Vena). I know I am motivated to Love because of my relationship with Jesus, I am sure people of other faiths have a similar motivation.
John K. Bergland wrote, “God never intended God’s boundaries to be less than the whole world. Therefore, none of us have a monopoly on God’s love. We may feel like we do when we look down on someone different than we are, or when we snicker at someone’s misfortune, or when we say, “Thank you, Lord, that I am not like them,” or when we say, “It’s too bad they do not believe as we believe.” But woe be unto us whenever we reek of such arrogance! For when we try to restrict God’s grace to ourselves, we cut ourselves off from that very grace. Why? Pierre Teilhard de Chardin may have said it best, “It is impossible to love Christ without loving others, and it is impossible to love others without moving nearer to Christ” (sermons.com).
Love is our ID badge. Love is Universal. Love even when it’s hard. We get to Love even when it’s hard, because that is what Jesus did. Jesus loved even as he was approaching the cross and being betrayed and would soon be denied. So, we do not get to pick when we are to be loving and we should always make time to love.
“An ethics professor at Princeton Seminary asked for volunteers for an extra assignment. Fifteen students showed up. He divided the group into three groups of five. He instructed the first group of five to proceed immediately across the campus to a certain spot; if they didn’t get there in fifteen minutes their grade would be affected. A minute or two later he instructed the second group to proceed across the campus to the same spot; but they were given forty-five minutes to get there. After they left, he instructed the last group to go across the campus to that spot too; but they were given three hours for the trip.
Now, unknown to any of these students, the teacher had arranged with three students from the Drama Department to meet them along the way, acting as people in great need: the first one they met covered his head with his hands and moaned out loud as though in great pain; the second, a little bit further along the way, was on some steps lying face down as if unconscious; the third, on the very steps of the destination, acted out an epileptic seizure. You know what the ethics professor discovered? Not one of the first group stopped, two of the second group stopped, and all five of the third group stopped. What the experiment tells us is that when we are too busy, with tight schedules and impossible deadlines, there is no time for love.” (Sermons.com, Keith Wagner). Jesus gives a new commandment to love. Love One Another! I pray we will always make time to love, that we know the way we love is our Christian ID badge and that we humbly love, because we follow a humble and gracious Lord. Love One Another. Amen.
