For Goodness Snakes (Isaiah 6:1 - 8)

There’s a movie came out a few years ago called Snakes on a Plane, and it was exactly what the title says: there were snakes. And they were on a plane. A 747, to be exact, and its chief pleasure was Samuel L. Jackson, who I’d watch read the phone book, and who spent most of the movie finding creative ways to dispatch said snakes. Because they were on a plane. And don’t worry, animal lovers—no actual snakes were harmed in the making of that movie, just very fake-looking, computer-generated critters.

Anyway, if they were to make a movie about today’s about Isaiah’s vision they might call it Snakes in a Temple, because that’s what Seraphs were: snakes with three pairs of legs: one pair covering their faces, one pair doing the flying, and one pair covering their, uh, feet. And you say “Wait a minute, pastor, snakes don’t have feet,” and you’re right, they don’t, but “feet” is a Hebrew euphemism for their privates, so at least they were modest snakes, and not particularly stupid, either: they covered their faces so they wouldn’t look directly upon the Lord on his throne because it was well known that if you were to do so, you’d be burnt to a crisp, or undergo some other equally gruesome death. Even if you were a flying snake.

And I love this passage, for a variety of reasons, chief among them being the surpassing weirdness of it all. Here’s God, sitting on this huge throne, so big that the hem of his robe takes up the whole room, and puny old Isaiah is so small that all he can see is the big toe of the Lord—which is still better than Elijah, who only got to see his backside. And high overhead, flapping around where Isaiah knew the Holy Head must be, were those snakes, squawking and carrying on, bug-eyed and completely alien, screeching out their refrain: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of Hosts!”. The sound echoed in the temple with a cadence all its own—“Holy, Holy, Holy! Holy, Holy, Holy!” Isaiah covered his ears, but he couldn’t keep the sound out: “Holy, Holy, Holy! Holy, Holy, Holy!” and it seemed that the wings of the snakes beat in time to the chant “Holy, Holy, Holy! Holy, Holy, Holy!”

And the whole throne shook with their screeching—“Holy, Holy, Holy!”—and the Temple was filled with the greasy smoke of the sacrificial altar, and it swirled around in torch-lit eddies, clogging Isaiah’s nose—“Holy, Holy, Holy!” Sweat ran freely down his forehead, stinging his eyes and staining his robe, and he couldn’t keep a tremor out of his legs, they were shaking like the palsy.

And the tremble in his legs crept into his voice as he said “Woe is me! I’m lost, ‘cause I’m a man of unclean lips”—“Holy, Holy, Holy!” —“and I live among a people of unclean lips!” His point being that such lips would be unfit to speak the Word God. But before we praise him for his humility, before we slap him on the back for his modesty, let’s remember that this was just the latest in a line of prophetic dithering, prophetic stalling . It was common knowledge that prophets weren’t the best-treated individuals on the block, they tended to have a short life spans and hard lives. That’s because they generally told the people—and often, their rulers as well—how God was going to get them, how God was going to punish them for some infraction or another. So almost-prophets tried to get out of they whole thing. Moses used the excuse that he couldn’t speak in public; Jeremiah tried something similar, saying “Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” And Jonah just up and ran away, taking the first boat to Tarshish.

But of course, God wasn’t so easily dissuaded—God said to Moses “ok, if you can’t talk, get Aaron to do it.” He told Jeremiah “Don’t say to me I’m just a boy . . . get some courage, why don’t you?” And off course, he sent that giant fish to persuade ol’ Jonah. And no sooner had Isaiah said “I am a man of unclean lips” than a seraph peeled away from the flock, fluttered over to the altar, and grabbed at something with a pair of tongs. It soared up and up to the highest heights of the temple, to it’s pinnacle, as if to get up as much speed as it could, then folded it’s wings and dove straight at him. “Holy, Holy, Holy!”

And as it got closer, it seemed time stood still, and he could begin to make out snakey details: cold, beady eyes, staring without blinking. Tongues flickering in and out as if to taste the winds. Dry, reptilian scent, redolent of ashes and musk. Worst of all, he could see what it held in tongs grasped in its mouth: a live coal, fanned into white-hot brilliance by the descent. “Holy, Holy, Holy! Is the Lord of Hosts!”

And it’s funny: he didn’t feel the impact, he didn’t feel the shock as several pounds of reptile hit him in the head, but he certainly felt the heat as he was branded, full on the mouth, by the fiery kiss. Pain shot through his body and he fell back from the shock. And he hears the seraph say “Now your guilt has departed—your sin has been blotted away.”   . . . That’ll teach you to whine about being unclean, that’ll teach you to make lame excuses why you can’t answer the summons of God! Now you have none, no grounds to refuse . . .

And the reason we read this passage on Trinity Sunday is because it reveals a key attribute of that first member of that trio: the complete transcendence, the complete otherness of God the creator. When you get right down to it, it’s the first thing we can say about this God: he (or she or it) ain’t like you and me. At all.

In fact, that’s what kadosh—the Hebrew word we translate as “holy”—means: it means “different,” “set-apart,” “other.” So there in Solomon's temple, the flying snakes were singing of the oddness, the otherness, of God. “Holy, Holy, Holy!,” they sang. “Other, other, other.” But it wasn’t like you had to convince Isaiah of that, he was well aware of how strange everything was, how that humongous being could crush him like a grape if the whim were to take him. And it wasn’t like Isaiah hadn’t heard the stories of God doing just that, stomping on enemies like so many wriggling, messy cockroaches.

In his vision, Isaiah saw God as he was expected to: as a super-person, a super-sovereign, as it were, one that could take care of kingly business, protecting the people from their many foes—whether imagined or not. That was the Hebrew vision of the Lord, mighty in valor and deed. But in the fulness of time, in kairos time, we received another vision of God, did we not? A vision of God not as some far-off transcendence, not exhibiting Karl Barth’s unbridgeable gap, but right here beside us, walking the dusty, messy roads of life.

If Isaiah’s vision revealed the God who is so unlike us that it’s scary, Jesus reveals the God who’s so like us it’s . . . what? Comforting. Tender. Real. Jesus reveals the God who loves us so much that he came to share what we share, feel what we feel, suffer what we suffer. As Paul puts it, he emptied himself of god-hood and was born in human likeness, humbling himself even unto death on a cross.

But Jesus reveals something else about the divine, doesn’t he? He reveals that not only was God with us in human form, but that God is with us, even, as he says in Matthew’s last line, unto the ends of the earth. And although exactly how this is so is something of a mystery—it wouldn’t be very interesting if it wasn’t—Jesus hints at it, saying I in you and you in me, and that he will send the Spirit which—as Lee told us earlier—goes where it will.

And so—putting two and two together—the notion of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit was born. The Spirit dwells within . . . not only in us but in all of creation. Paul in Colossians puts it this way: in Christ all things hold together. All things, no exception. The divine—through Christ, through the Holy Spirit, through the creative act of the Father (they are all three the same)—dwells within all of creation. And it is this indwelling of the Spirit/Christ/Creator that is the continuing face of God. Amen.

Prophecy and New Wine (Acts 2:1 - 21)

Everybody’s hangin’ out in one place, noshing on chips and dip, washing it down with Bethany Lite and watching the Jerusalem Bengals get creamed on national TV. You know, a typical Sunday afternoon in Palestine, and they’re feeling pretty good about themselves—not too long ago, they’d seen Jesus rise majestically into heaven, like one of Elon Musk’s rocket ships, after telling them they’d be witnesses unto the ends of the earth already, which made them feel mighty proud, if a little confused. They’d thought it was all about kicking the Romans out, they thought it was about restoring Israel, but it turned out was about restoring the entire earth. Though they aren’t sure what this witnessing stuff is going to be all about, that’s in the future . . . at the moment, they had administrative things to see to. Like their number: you couldn’t be there new Israel with just eleven, and they’d just finished filling their numbers back out to twelve. And Matthias, the one they’d chosen, was steadfast and true, and most importantly, not likely to betray them like you-know-who.

Anyway, there they are, watching the game, when the other team—their arch-rivals the Cairo Chargers—score a touchdown, and a mighty groan rises up unto heavens, and as if in response, a sound like a huge wind comes howling out of the sky, kind of like a freight train or a tornado or something, and all the disciples quake in fear, thinking “Holy Guacamole, God must be a Chargers fan.” But then these tongues appear, one on each of their foreheads, only they’re not, like, wet or drooling, they’re not juicy, they look like they’re made of fire, flickering and leaping and dancing, and almost as one, the disciples come to realize that they’re not in Kansas anymore.

And they start to babble in their fear and wonder, but it comes out in other languages, in other tongues—get it?—and they look around at each other, gaping in surprise, thinking I didn’t know that James knew Elamite, when did he pick that up? Or Cappadocian—Matthew’s never even been near that place, and here he is, babbling away. But in their hearts, they all know that it’s the work of the Holy Spirit—because hadn’t they been promised it back at the ascension? But it’s still hard to wrap their minds around it . . .

Meanwhile, outside the house, there are Jews from everywhere . That’s because it’s the “Festival of Weeks”—Shavuot in Hebrew, Pentecost in Greek—when Jews come and bring their first-fruit offerings to the Temple. And there amongst the pop-up bagel stands and ads for Jerusalem Idol, they could suddenly hear the disciples, speaking within the house. Maybe it’s because they are in an open courtyard—a constant feature of Palestinian homes—or maybe the Spirit is amplifying the apostolic speech, like some kind of a Holy Bullhorn, but they can hear every word the disciples are saying. And not only hear, but because of that speaking in tongues thing, they can actually understand . . . Parthians, Medes, and Elamites. Mesopotamians, Judeans and Cappadocians. Pontians and Asian, Phrygian and Pamphylians, Egyptians and Romans, Cretans and Arabs. All can hear, all can understand, the thrilling tales about the mighty deeds of God.

And of course, that’s idea behind that whole tongues thing, isn’t it? It makes the Good News accessible to everyone, not to just a few who speak some back-water, nearly-dead language like Aramaic. With illiteracy the order of the day, oral transmission was essential, it was the way news—good or bad—was spread. Even the letters of evangelists like Paul were written to be read aloud, because most people just couldn’t hack it otherwise.

That’s the story of Pentecost: the removal of barriers. Barriers to transmission of the Gospel. Barriers to hospitality. Barriers to getting along, to community. Jews of the Diaspora—the sixth-century BC dispersal out of Palestine—spoke many languages, they still do, and if they were to hear the good news, if they were to taste that new wine, somebody would have to come to them where they were, linguistically as well as locality-wise. Pentecost is—among other things—the disciples’ first lesson in tailoring the message not to the messenger but to those for whom it is meant.

Some churches haven’t learned that lesson to this day, have they? They continue to wrap the gospel in clothing that was fashionable when they were formed, using words they know the meaning of, singing songs that make them feel good. It reminds me of the story in a book I read—the author swore it was true—about an unchurched guy who marries this devout Baptist and the first time they attend church together, he wonders when they are going to wash themselves in the blood. Or the time the young couple who were raised Hindu came to our church in Oregon and were embarrassed because they didn’t know the Lord’s prayer. Which is why to this day I make sure it’s written in the bulletin.

People who’ve grown up in the church know a code, a language . . . they know the Lord’s Prayer. They know that washed in the blood is a metaphor for saving grace. And it’s not just the words, it’s their whole mode of being. 500-year-old hymns are coded into our blood, our DNA. “Amazing Grace”—sung to the original tune, please!—makes me feel all weepy, its makes me feel comforted. It doesn’t necessarily do there same for someone who hasn’t grown up in the church.

All these things can bebarriers to the spreading of the gospel, almost as if it were a different language . . . what am I saying? It is a different language, a language of faith, and those of us who grew up in it know it, and those who didn’t . . . don’t. And of course, that’s what’s symbolized by the Pentecost story, the opening up of the language of faith to all parties, to all comers, whether—as Paul would put it—Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female.

 The message of Pentecost is that the barriers, the fences that separate one ethnicity from one another, one sexual orientation from another, one generation from another—all these barriers can be overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit through the action of the Holy Spirit, soft as a dove yet mighty like that Pentecost wind, and don’t you know that it blows where it will and to whomever it will? That it doesn’t blow just to who we think it should? That it doesn’t pay a lot of attention where and to whom we think it should?

Well. The disciples in the house are as amazed as the crowds of Jews outside—although some of the latter think they’re all drunk—and that irritates Peter enough that he pokes his head out and gives his first speech: “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, these aren’t drunk as you suppose ‘cause it is only nine o’clock in the morning.” (Apparently, he’d never heard the one about it’s always noon somewhere). But no, he says, it’s prophesy, and he quotes a passage from Joel to explain what’s happening: “in the last days God will pour out the Holy Spirit on everybody, and and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” And notice that Peter is here assuming that those were the last days, something that Jesus warned him against at the ascension, as we saw last week.

And here we are, almost 2000 years later, and we still haven’t come to the end, despite periodic proclamations from this preacher or that one that they’ve figured it all out, that they’ve broken that code and know when it’s going to happen. And though the promise of Pentecost—that the Good News be spread to the nations—would seem to be pretty much fulfilled—I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a people that hasn’t heard the message—we’re still working on the inclusion thing. And as the world gets smaller, as we bump up against one another more and more in that inevitable global dance, the questions of getting along, of communication, of tolerance become increasingly acute.

So Happy Birthday, Church, many happy returns . . . now let’s get back to work! Amen.

Many Convincing Proofs (Acts 1:3-14)

      It’s the last Sunday of Easter – the seventh, actually – but it’s also Ascension Sunday, when we look at how Christ “ascended into heaven” where he “sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty,” as we say in the Apostle’s Creed.  But of all the Gospel writers, only Luke tells us about it, and he does it twice . . . first in his Gospel – in the passage Tom read – and over here in Acts, which is the second book of his two-part volume written for Theophilus.  And you might think, great, I’ll bet we know a lot about it, how it really must have happened, but there’s a slight problem: the two stories don’t match.  They contradict one another – over in Luke’s gospel, it all happens on Easter evening, after a resurrection day of appearances, first to the women at the tomb, then on the Emmaus Road, and finally to the eleven gathered for a meal in Jerusalem.  And after eating a piece of broiled fish – how many ghosts do you know who eat? – after eating a piece of broiled fish, he gives them final instructions, leads them out to Bethany, and is carried up into heaven.

      But in Acts, forty days go by between his resurrection and his ascension – it says so right in verse 3 –  “After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days . . .” and it doesn’t say anything about Bethany – it seems to happen on some mountain called “Olivet,” and he is lifted up on a cloud which, for that matter, isn’t mentioned in the gospel account . . . and what about those two guys in white?  Where’d they come from, and why weren’t they mentioned over in the Gospel?  You’d think something as amazing as two visiting angels – or whatever they were, Luke doesn’t really say – would stick in your mind, and you wouldn’t forget . . . and so what gives?  Was it forty days or one?  Was it in Bethany or in Jerusalem?  Were the guys in white there or not?  And more intriguing, why would the same author, writing to the same audience – one Theophilus – tell the same story differently, almost back-to-back?  Wouldn’t he expect Theophilus to notice?

      Well . . . yes, and in fact, he was probably counting on it.  And further, Theophilus might have expected no less.  Educated people of first century Palestine – as Theophilus almost certainly was – did not expect historical accuracy, even in what appears to us to be an historical account.  They knew that Luke and Acts were theological documents just as much as historical ones, and expected the authors to shape the stories, or at least the way they were told, to communicate larger, theological truths.  Those of us in the West, on the other side of the enlightenment, have problems with this sort of thing . . . if something is not totally accurate, totally, factually true, then it’s gotta be false . . . in 21^st Century America we divide literature into two basic categories, fiction and non-fiction, just look at the book review page of the New York Times if you don’t believe me.  But for the people of the first century world, things weren’t that simplistic – they often mixed what we would consider historical fact – Jesus’ crucifixion, for example – with what we might consider fiction, like the nice round number of forty days . . . or did it happen on the same night?  They both can’t be true . . . or can they?

      In the opening credits of the movie Adaptation, the screenwriters are listed as Charlie Kaufmann and his twin brother Donald, and as the movie progresses it becomes clear that the movie’s about the writing of itself, and in the course of the movie, we meet both screenwriters, Charlie and his brother Donald, and Donald is killed course of the film, and in the movie’s closing credits, it’s dedicated to his memory, and it’s all very touching and weepy and everything, but there’s just one problem – Donald Kaufmann, the twin brother, never really existed.  He’s a construct by the screenwriter to make a point, to symbolically represent something, in this case, his commercial self, the guy that knows how to write action-filled screenplays that are basically garbage, but sell a lot of tickets, over and against his identity as an artiste, who doesn’t sell out to Hollywood.  His twin brother wasn’t factually true, he didn’t really eat, breath and write bad screenplays, but he demonstrates a certain truth nevertheless.

      And these days, this makes us mad, how dare he mess with our heads like that, and I don’t want to get cards and letters – how dare you compare a sleazy Hollywood piece of garbage to Holy Scripture – but it illustrates a point.  Like it or not, Scripture is full of symbols, and when we take it literally, as in word-for-word, or as literal history, we obscure the symbols, we flatten the text right out, we divorce it from some of its greater truths.  Take the forty days, for instance . . . we think . . . “How nice.  Lots of things happened in forty days – or years – back then . . .” but a first-century hearer would say “Forty days!  Aha!  A symbolic number . . . what am I supposed to take away from this?”  And she would think back . . . the Israelites were in the wilderness for forty years, Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for forty days . . . and what’s more, forty is one of the nice, round numbers of Judaism, it signifies completeness, ripeness, the fullness of time . . . and so whether or not Jesus ascended after forty days, or just before midnight on Easter, a first-century reader would immediately pick up on the forty part and try to figure out what it meant.

      So, what does it mean?  Luke says “After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.”  And thus he links this episode to his suffering, his crucifixion, and to his post-resurrection appearances, which provided “many convincing proofs,” and to his preaching about the kingdom of God.  And so Luke is saying that for time, Jesus appeared to them, offering many convincing proofs that he was indeed alive, and now the hour has come, the fullness of time had arrived . . . this is the time predicted.  And as if we needed any more convincing that it’s about time, the first words out of Jesus’ mouth are about time – “not many days from now, you will be baptized by the Holy Spirit.”  And so it is now the fullness of time, when the time is ripe . . . after many convincing proofs that he is indeed alive, the time has arrived . . . for what?  “John baptized with water,” he says, “But you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”  So that’s part of it, at least . . . the time has become ripe for the coming of the Holy Spirit . . .

      But the disciples are thinking there may be more, they’re thinking in terms of the Messiah, they guy who will surely restore Israel to her former glory . . . could this be the time?  Could the time be ripe for the promised restoration?  And his reply is at once vague and tantalizing, he doesn’t deny that Israel will be restored, he doesn’t even deny that this is the time . . . he just says “It’s not for you to know.”  Now, Luke has just got through setting us up to think that a special time has come, and in almost the next sentence Jesus says it’s not for us to know them . . . “it’s not for you to know the times or periods,” he says, “that the father has set by his own authority.”

      Has anybody seen John Hagee on TV?  He had a show on Trinity Broadcast Network, and that’s where I used to catch him from time to time . . . but he’s written scads of books, and they’re mostly about the same thing . . .  times and periods.  He’s what they call a “dispensationalist,” which is a big word for someone who thinks that history can be divided into periods or “dispensations.”  Dispensationalists like Hagee prepare huge charts that show when these times will be, and what they mean.  For instance, most of them think we’re in the dispensation of grace . . . that after the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, we are in a new age whereby God’s grace is holding sway . . . but it won’t last forever, they think.  Sooner or later will come the next dispensation, and they differ as to what it may be, but all of them believe we are living toward the end of this period of grace . . .

            But Jesus says it’s not for us to know these things, it’s not for us to know the dispensations, if there even are such things. Ours is not to wonder why . . . so what’s the deal?  What is it time for, if not the restoration of Israel?  The disciples ask if this isn’t the time for glory, for good things to happen to them, as Oral Roberts might say, and Jesus says “It’s not for you to know.  But . . . you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”  And, as if to punctuate these words, he rises up on a cloud, and they see him no more on this earth.  And as everybody who reads history knows, the last words of an important figure are especially important, especially revered, and his said that we’re gonna receive power, and be his witnesses – not just in Jerusalem, not just in Judea and Samaria, but to the ends of the earth.  And it’s no wonder the disciples stand gaping after him as he goes up on that cloud – they ask him about the restoration of Israel, he tells them about the salvation of the earth.

      In one fell swoop, the scope of their activities is hugely expanded – to the end of the earth – and of course, we’re the benefits of that, aren’t we?  If the message hadn’t been taken to the ends of the earth, we wouldn’t have been sitting here in the pews this fine Sunday morning.  If you want “many convincing proofs” of the Holy Spirit power promised to the disciples, think about multitudes of converts over the years . . . if you want proof of the faithfulness of those stunned disciples, look at the worldwide church today.  And to pound the point home even further, two guys in white show up and direct their eyes back down to earth, back to the task at hand – “Why do you stare up into heaven?” they say, “This Jesus will come in the same way as you saw him go.”  Don’t stare at the glory, don’t think about heaven, just keep your eyes on the prize . . . it is not for you to know about the times or periods, pay attention to the task at hand.  And immediately, they go back to Jerusalem, where they immerse themselves in prayer.

      And the whole scene is a set piece, a bit of holy theater, and it doesn’t really matter if it happened in Olivet or Bethany, or on Easter night or forty days later . . . it’s designed to make very specific points:  the time has arrived, all right, but not quite the time we might expect.  It’s not the time for the restoration of Israel, it’s not the time for glory, for trumpets or golden chandeliers . . . it’s time for hard work, for hoofing it around to the ends of the earth.  But it’s O.K., ‘cause you have the power, the Holy Ghost power, to uphold you along the way.

      And of course, that’s where we are today . . . we’re in the time after Jesus’ ascension, and before his coming again, whatever that’s going to be, and I don’t think our mandate to reach them is undimmed . . . I don’t think our work is done, even though there’s probably not an end of the earth left that hasn’t seen our witness.  But the fact is, we’re living in a sea of unchurched – of once-churched and never-churched – and our witness is to them, they are our “ends of the earth,” . . . our mission field is right here in Cincinnati, Ohio.  And we have the Holy Ghost power to support us and uphold us and to power us along the way.

      And that’s the good news . . . we have a job to do, but we’re not alone, we have the power . . . we have the power of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.  Every time we invite a friend to church, every time we tell someone about our faith, every time we witness to anybody in our community, Jesus is right there by our side.  And he has the words of eternal life, he is the way to eternity . . . so it’s not for us to know the times or periods, it’s fruitless to endlessly speculate and fulminate about how long it’s going to be, or what this or that event is a sign of, or what this or that thing means.  None of that matters, except to the intellectually curious, perhaps, or the terminally idle.  But as for us – like the disciples – we don’t have that luxury . . . ours is not to wonder why, ours is just to do . . . and live.  Amen.

That Crazy Little Thing Called Love (John 15: 9-17)

      You will note that this week’s reading from John takes up where last week’s leaves off . . . and many scholars point out that the passage actually shouldn’t be broken up, that it’s really a continuation of the vine and branches story . . . Christ is the vine, we are the branches, and without the nourishment provided from the vine, without the connection to God through Jesus Christ, a fruitful Christian life is not possible . . . and now Jesus carries the theme of abiding – the branches abide in the vine – a step further, saying abide in my love . . . one of the fruits we Christians bear if our connection to Christ is strong is love . . . and so that’s what we’re here to talk about today, this often-misunderstood little thing called love.

      But first, a little myth-deflating . . . there’s a common belief that in the Hebrew scriptures – which we call the Old Testament – God is war-like, judgmental, and pretty scary, while over in the New Testament, it’s suddenly revealed that God is love, a warm-and-fuzzy kind of guy, and that God really wouldn’t do anything like destroy all the world in a flood or smite Sodom with bolts of fire, thus crisping the good and bad alike.  And perhaps that’s true . . . but as anyone who’s read the Old Testament knows, that there’s plenty in there about a loving God – in Psalm 136, for example, the phrase “[God’s] steadfast love endures forever” is repeated twenty-six times, one for each verse.  But even in the face of constant de-bunking, the myth keeps rearing its ugly head, and I think it’s a not-so-subtle form of anti-Semitism . . . see, it says, our Christian God is the new, improved version, God (version 2.4), but the God those Jews worship . . . well, primitive isn’t the word, he’s blood-thirsty, and that’s what’s reflected in that “Old,” out-of-date Testament, while we Christians, know better – we’re more sophisticated than that, we know that “God is love,” it says so in our nice, shiny, New Testament.

      But we forget that many of the writers in the New Testament were Jews – Paul was a Jew, Matthew was a Jew, and John, the author of today’s passage, was . . . a Jew.  Oh, and one other thing – Jesus was a Jew, as well . . .  And so there’s a continuity between the Hebrew and Christian scriptures on the topic of love, among quite a few other things, actually . . . and in fact, we Christians are supposed to be defined by it . . . but of course, we’ve all been around long enough to know that it’s ideally that way, but not really – there often seems to be a whole lot of talking about it, but very little doing it.  And if you talk to un-churched people, one of their biggest complaints is that we say one thing, and then do another.  We sing “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” and then turn around and back-bite and gossip about each other just as if we were at the garden or the rotary club.  And there’s no mystery as to why this is true . . . loving folks is hard, unrewarding work.

      But, Jesus says “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,” and that should be enough, shouldn’t it?  After all, Jesus said it, I believe it, and that settles it.  But here’s the crux of the problem . . . this seems to be enormously contradictory, and downright phony, too . . . love is not something you can just turn on or turn off, it’s not something that somebody can tell you to do . . . it just happens, like some glorious sunrise, or a cool morning breeze off the ocean . . . nobody can command love, it’s just not . . . command-able.  Nobody can make me love the guy who stands for everything I hate, who goes out of his way every day to irritate me, who seems to take perverse pride in mocking the faith of my ancestors . . . and what about our national scapegoats – oops, I mean, villains?  What about Vladimir Putin, say, or the Islamic bad guy of the week?  How am I supposed to love these people who oppress their own people, attempt to sway our sacred elections and foment terror around the world?

      Well, the secret is . . . we’re not.  Not if it means having squishy, warm-and-fuzzy feelings about them, anyway . . . love as desire, love as feelings, nothing more than feelings, is not what we’re talking about here . . . Jesus defines it this way: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.”  We’re talking about love as action here, love as a verb – love as defined by doing, not just feeling.  And the highest expression of love is that a person lays down his or her life for friends, and of course he’s talking about himself, here, isn’t he?  He defines love by his own actions in laying himself down for us, whom he calls “friends.”

      I suspect that this . . . misconception . . . about the nature of love is at the root of a lot of self-esteem problems, as it relates to being Christian anyway . . . I know it has been for me, over the years . . . try as I may, I can’t dredge up the emotion for just anyone, and that’s bothered me over the years.  I must be some kind of midget Christian, way inferior to those giants of Christianity like Mother Theresa or Thomas Merton who so obviously loved everyone . . . but how do we know they loved everyone, why was it so obvious?  Well . . . they must have loved everyone, look at what they did, look at how they spent their lives, feeding and sheltering and ministering to the poor, but here’s the secret . . . the love is the ministering, it is the working for others.  No one has greater love than this, and what is the “this?”  To lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  And to get the full impact of this, I have to tell you that the Greek here for life is “psyche,” which can mean physical life – as in dying on a cross – but much more often means “self,” or “being,” and I rather think Jesus means all of the above, both the physical and the spiritual senses.  The saying both looks forward to his death – and at the time of our passage it was only hours away – and backwards to his life of healing and ministering.  In other words, loving.

      And so when we say “Mother Theresa lay down her life for those she loved” we’ve got it wrong, we’ve got it just backwards.  Mother Theresa loved those kids by laying down her life.  The laying down of her life was the loving.  If she hadn’t laid down her life, there would have been no love.  And that’s how Jesus can command us to love one another, and expect us to do it . . . love is an act of will more than any emotional attachment.  We don’t have to feel any emotional rush for those we love, any warm and happy feelings, any love-boat, starry-eyed, film-at-eleven sentiment, although it certainly makes things easier if we do.  And the bottom line, as the Nike ad might say it, is just do it.

      So – you may be thinking – so!  This is good news?  It seems to me that if you gotta work for it, it’s not particularly a good thing.  I mean, isn’t this all supposed to be grace?  Isn’t it an article of our faith that nothing we can do or say can win us eternal life?  And here we are, talking about Jesus’ commandment, something we have to do, all this laying down our lives stuff?  Isn’t salvation supposed to be free?  Well . . . yes.  But it’s not salvation we’re talking about.  Jesus is talking to the disciples here, remember . . . and he says “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”  We don’t have to do anything to become Jesus’ disciples, we don’t have to choose to become Christians . . . Jesus chooses us.  But that’s not what this is about.  What it is about is joy . . . “I have said these things,” Jesus says, “so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”  And what is it that he said?  “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love . . .” abide in my love . . . stay in it, live in it, bask in it . . . if we keep his commandment – and we’ve seen what that is, it’s to love one another – we will be surrounded by Christ’s love like a warm and comforting blanket.  And then, our joy will be complete.

      There’s a brand of Christianity that’s pretty popular these days . . . some folks call it “prosperity doctrine” or a “victory gospel” because it preaches that if you just become a Christian – by reaching out and accepting the free gift of salvation from God, sounds like you’re choosing God, not the other way around, but that’s another sermon – if you just become a Christian, all your worries will be over, you’ll get whatever you need, and you’ll be victorious in your everyday life. As Garrison Keillor might say, all your women will be strong, your men good looking, and your children above average.  And churches that preach this kind of thing grow in part because they make it look easy: all you gotta do is accept Jesus and you’ve got it made.  Well, you might have to start tithing too . . .

      And Jesus does talk about joy and abiding in love, but there’s a catch – you gotta do what he says, you gotta follow his commandments, and there’s really only one, and it sums up and supersedes and contains all the others . . . love one another, as I have loved you.  The fulfilling Christian life, the peace that passes all understanding, the abiding and living in the love of God through Jesus Christ comes at a price:  that we love one another.

      And we’ve all seen the consequences of not doing so, haven’t we?  We’ve all seen the pain and heartache that can go on in a church where the members don’t practice love one for another . . . a congregation can be a miserable place to be if there’s fighting and feuding and fussing going on.  And it ruins their mission, which is to spread the gospel in thought, word and deed . . . people don’t want to come to a church that is in turmoil.  People look at a congregation like that, and it confirms their worst opinions of church, that our protestations – “They will know we are Christians by our love” – are hollow and hypocritical, like on the TV commercials where the guy says to his fishing buddy “I love you man,” and it’s just a ploy to get his beer.

      This loving of one another is hard work, no getting around it, it’s easier just to come to church once a week for an hour, pass superficial pleasantries to one another and then go home.  It seems like an impossible task, except for one thing . . . it’s made possible because Jesus first loved us . . . it’s made possible because he first laid down his life for us, whom he calls “friends.”  And therein lies the key to all the loving – it’s the relationship the church, the community of believers, the body with Christ as its head, has with Jesus.  He calls us “friends” and it’s an intimate relationship, we are his friends if we abide in his love . . . and Christ’s divine choosing is the basis for this friendship.  Unlike earthly friendship, where both parties have a choice, we do not choose Christ but he chose us.  There is no room for haughtiness, no room for boasting – we aren’t better than anybody else because we are followers if Jesus – it isn’t up to us.  And finally, if we are chosen by Jesus, we have enormous staying power when the task of bearing fruit, the task of loving one another, becomes unbearably hard.  The choosing, electing grace of God in Christ will not falter even if we do.

            And that’s the bottom-line here, that’s the grace, the good news . . . it’s that God has not given us an impossible task, to lay down our lives for others, to love them even if we can’t stand them.  He promises to sustain us with his love . . . If we follow his commandments, we will abide in his love, and his love will empower us, it will surround us, and it will hold us up as we follow him.  The good news is that God has not given us an impossible task, that in fact, it’s in the doing of that task, the bearing of those fruits of love, that our joy is made complete.  Amen.