Oof y’all – as I sat down to write this sermon, I was feeling a lot of pressure. This is my last sermon from this pulpit as one of your priests. Maybe Greg brings me back as a guest preacher in the future – but it’ll be as a guest. So, with that in mind, I sat down to write this sermon with the looming thought that this is my final word to my first formal congregation.
Then I remembered…I don’t have the final word. My words are just a small part of a greater purpose. Instead, Love is the final Word. The Love that lived, died, rose, and lives again for us is the final Word. Everything I say or do should just illuminate Love. So, even when this sermon is done, when I give my last word in this church, I can feel at peace and know that it is not the final Word, as long as I know that I did my best to point us back to Love. Then the words started flowing. They turned into the discussion that we’re going to have today about love in the context of one line of our Gospel – “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.”[1] “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends” is one of those verses that seems to be glorified as the pinnacle of Christian witness. Often, it’s reserved for martyrs – people who have been killed for their faith – and people whose professions put them in harm’s way. On that note, it’s both funny to me and fitting that this was our Gospel for today because this is a favorite verse of military personnel. Laying down one’s life for one’s friends takes a pretty literal meaning in military settings. I’ve talked with many Soldiers for whom this verse motivates them to live lives of selfless service, sometimes even making the ultimate sacrifice. So, yes, there is a literal meaning to this verse – especially since Jesus’s death was the ultimate demonstration of God’s love for us – but what does “laying down one’s life for one’s friends” mean for our community? For St. Michael’s as a whole? For your individual daily lives? Yes, we all must be prepared to die; but we’re not all called to be martyrs. Christianity wouldn’t have survived post-Jesus if we were. This leads me to believe laying one’s life down for one’s friends may have another meaning in addition to death. In this passage, Jesus pronounces the greatest love – and this love about which he speaks is a self-emptying, other-centering, God-glorifying love. This love isn’t just a nice feeling that we passively experience. This love is action. And if I believe that love is action, then love is something we have the choice to do.[2] Every minute of every day. And to remind us of Greg’s sermon last week, love is action taken without expecting anything in return. This means that there is a sacrificial aspect to love. It is in this sacrificial aspect to love that I believe we can derive multiple meanings to laying down one’s life because sacrifice comes in many forms. For some of us, to lay down one’s life might mean stepping out of our comfort zones to speak up against injustice – even if it means we may lose a friend or financial backer. Laying down one’s life might mean foregoing your opportunity to lead, to be heard, in order to center and embolden someone else’s voice. It may mean using your position to build a bigger table or even just wedge the door open for those who have, historically, not been allowed in the room. Perhaps laying down your life means engaging in emotional vulnerability to have a challenging conversation with someone. It could mean uprooting your whole life to care for your elderly parent, causing you to lose money, relationships, and your sense of normalcy. To lay down your life might necessitate shrinking our ego and diminishing our pride to ask for help in the first place. It definitely means acknowledging the idols that we worship above God and working to dismantle these in our lives, policies, and institutions. As you can hear, there are many ways to lose one’s life. Yet, in losing our lives, we gain; because, if this loss is done for and in love, then we’re drawn closer to Christ. Laying down one’s life for one’s friends takes different forms for each of us given our positionality, identity, and life circumstances. What is sacrifice to some may not be sacrifice to others. There is no “one size fits all” to works of love. Rather, to know what you must do to help set the conditions for this greatest love to flourish requires discernment, introspection, and attunement to the cries of others. I cannot tell you what to do; but I can point us back to Love. If you need inspiration for actionable love, look no further than the final Word who is Love incarnate. You see, for us, as Christians, this actionable Love about which we’ve been speaking has a name. That name is Jesus, the enfleshed reality of our God who is Love. Jesus preached to us this greatest self-emptying, other-centering, God-glorifying love through both life and death. In life, Love welcomed the stranger, healed the sick, believed women, challenged structures of oppression, sat with people in their pain, and praised God. In death, Love sacrificed, confronted fear, built inclusive communities, modeled vulnerability, forgave, and redeemed, all the while praising God. Love is the final Word. I realize that we, your clergy, talk about Love a lot. And if I sound like a broken record – perhaps it’s not the record that is broken, but the world. There is a reason our Gospel always comes back to Love, after all. Because our world is broken. I don’t need to tell you that. But I do need to proclaim that Love still breaks through – in Christ and in you and me. Our Gospel tells us that God created us, chose us, appointed us to be co-creators to set the conditions for Love to flourish – for all people, all creation, everywhere. God appointed us, said “Get your house in order, prioritize Love, then once you do, get out of this pulpit, walk out those doors and spread this love to the world in real, tangible ways to help co-create My kingdom on earth.” God didn’t say, “hey, can you do this?” or “Pencil in “acts of love” for, eh, Advent 2022? Nah, make it Easter 2023? Feels more liturgically correct…” No! Jesus appoints us right now. Right here. To bear lasting, systemic, institutionalized, unmistakable fruit. And by fruit, he means love. Love to our neighbors, ourselves, to the created world, as a guiding principle in our systems and institutions, and yes even to that person you cannot stand because they too are your neighbor and are deserving of love! Love – to everywhere and everyone – in an actionable, pragmatic sense that calls us to radically reorient ourselves in how we see and engage the world. And we, as Christians, are given that example by God, through Christ, who was Love among us, showed us that love is a way of being that we can choose to live every day, sacrificed his comfort to create cultural change in the name of love, and in dying for us, made sure that Love has the final Word. Love. Amen. [1] John 15:13. [2] Informed by bell hooks in all about love. |