This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, April 25, 2010.

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Readings

Acts 11:1–18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1–6
John 13:31–35

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Prayer

Stir up in us, O Father, the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that we may see your Son, risen and reigning as Lord of all. Amen.

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Message

Saying just this one word—love—
brings to mind so many beloved lyrics:
+ What the world needs now is love, sweet love.
+ Love, love me do. You know I love you.
+ All you need is love.
+ Love is a many-splendored thing.
+ Love is a rose, so you better not pick it.

And that’s just a quick sample to remind us
about how pervasive is this emotion, this feeling
in our popular culture and its art and music.
When we mention these sentiments
we find our minds filled with images:
candy and flowers, dreamy-eyed stares,
the old and familiar stories of boy meets girl,
girl and boy struggle, then separate,
but finally find one another and live happily ever after.

We listen to song after song,
watch movie upon movie,
read books and go to plays
to see and hear this same story
told again and again
for the simple reason
that we have a need and a desire
to know that feeling,
to trust that somewhere there is someone
who loves us deeply and wholeheartedly.

We call this feeling “love,” and it is.
But it is really more precise to call it romantic love.
And when we properly focus this love in fidelity and honor
to our husband or wife
or the person we contemplate
asking to be wife or husband,
then our romantic love is a reflection of and a testimony
to God’s love and care for us.

And then there is the love
we share a little more broadly
and spread a little more widely:
our love of neighbor.

Especially as Christians,
we believe God has called us to share this love
with those around us.
We trust he wants us to help people in need,
to offer from our abundance the support that others require
when they suffer from scarcity and want.

We call this action “love” as well, and it is.
But it might be more helpful to use the old-fashioned term “charity.”
And not in the sense of distributing a hand-out to people in need,
but in the more classic sense of expressing “care for humanity.”

This love—charity—is also an echo, an extension
of God’s love and care for us.
We’ve learned this from St. Paul’s hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13:
“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;
and the greatest of these is love (or charity),”
depending upon the translation. (1 Corinthians 13:13, NRSV)

With these two kinds of love
in our hearts and minds,
we do not come to today’s Gospel
as blank slates, as empty baskets.
We arrive at the reading
with these forms of love and our personal histories
swirling around us.
They shape and color our perceptions.
They predispose us to certain feelings and thoughts.
We cannot change that about ourselves,
but now we are more aware of our make-up,
we are more conscious of how we hear talk of love.

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On the evening of his betrayal by Judas,
his arrest at the hands of his fellow Jews,
his abandonment by his disciples,
his denial by Peter, his trusted disciple,
Jesus said to his gathered followers:

I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you,
you also should love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another. (John 13:34–35, NRSV)

Why was the commandment new?
There’s nothing new about love.
Since Adam found in Eve
bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh,
husbands and wives have loved one another deeply and faithfully.

Since God rescued Israel from Egypt
and then called his people to a task—
because they themselves had been landless and lost—
to care for the widows, orphans, and sojourners in their midst,
God’s people have practiced charity.

So what was new about this commandment?
What was new was Jesus himself.
He told his disciples and he tells us to love others the way he has loved us.
And that way is new.
Jesus’ love for us is the love of Immanuel, God with us,
lived out by sacrificing himself,
by dying on the cross,
by giving up everything he is for one purpose:
“Now the Son of Man has been glorified,
and God has glorified him.” (John 13:31, NRSV)

In John’s Gospel, glory comes when Jesus reveals himself.
That’s why the beginning of the Gospel tells us:
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,
full and of grace and truth.” (John 1:14, NRSV)

And Jesus, the Son, received that glory from his Father,
as Jesus himself prays to his Father in John 17:
“I glorified you on earth
by finishing the work that you gave me to do.
So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence
with the glory that I had in your presence
before the world existed.” (John 17:4–5, NRSV)

Glory and love combine
upon the cross of Jesus Christ.
This is what is new.
This is why the command is a new one.
This is what makes our love shared in obedience
new and different from the love that goes on outside the Church,
that merely echoes and emulates the love that God in Jesus Christ has for us.

When we love others the way Jesus loves us,
we give ourselves away,
we give up all that we are,
we give ourselves over to death.

And we can do this without real fear,
not because death is not scary.
It is, whether it means we sacrifice our lives,
or if it means we give up something important to us and die a little death along the way.

Death can be scary, but in the end, it is not worthy of our fear.
Because in the end,
it is not death that speaks the final word about you or me.
The last word comes from the Word
who was and is and always shall be the first Word,
who was with God and who is God.

And in John’s Revelation
Christ the Word speaks to us in love from his throne of glory, saying,
“Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4b, NRSV)

With this promise, nothing stands between us
and our living by the new command:
“Love one another.” Amen.