FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER – 06 MAY 2007

ST PAUL LUTHERAN CHURCH, ABQ NM – the Rev. P. L. Holman

Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 12:31-35

“What the world HAS now…”

Every once in a while I see a bumper sticker that seems to be meant for me. One Saturday afternoon during our Denver days I was zipping through traffic into the foothills, changing lanes more frequently than I should.  I was in a hurry, quite anxious because I had left the church a bit later than I planned for the outdoor wedding; it’s not too cool for the pastor to be late. As I moved into the far right lane I found myself behind an older Toyota sedan doing the speed limit.  Exasperated I was ready to change left when I noticed the bumper sticker.  In bold black letters on a white background it said, simply, RELAX. I laughed aloud, and slowed down.

Jesus has given his followers a new commandment, now as he prepares to leave them, going to a place they cannot come. Love one another, just as I have loved you.  “This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples – when they see the love you have for each other” [Peterson, THE MESSAGE, Navpress (2002), p.1949].  I suppose if he had designed a bumper sticker to grab our attention on this, it might be the one I saw the other day.  It read:

I support the separation of church and hate. Jesus would support that cause – there is no room in his example, in Christ’s body, for hate.

Trouble is, we’re human, and “hate” seems to come with the territory.  Generally speaking we know what we mean when we use that word. Some people hate broccoli, housecleaning or doing their homework.  Others hate junk mail, liars, or political campaign messages. A detour into the dictionary gives deeper insight into the word itself.  It comes from the Greek word kedos meaning grief. The definitions do indeed point us to feelings of enmity, aversion or strong hostility – “usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury” [Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary]. To show forth the love Jesus commanded requires us to name those unlovely feelings we harbor that are based on fear or anger, and to move beyond them.  To love one another following the example of Jesus calls for us to be honest about the ways we feel hurt or betrayed, turning to one another to seek forgiveness and reconciliation instead of turning our backs on the problem to get even, or get away.  To love one another as Jesus commanded we need to be willing to name the grief that burdens our souls, and walk with one another through those valleys of grief to the light that is love.

The Apostle Peter’s story is instructive for us.  Called to follow, he gives up home and career and does just that.  He is with the disciples when Jesus prepares them for his departure.  We don’t know this from the passage I just read, but if we go back to chapter 13 of John’s gospel and read on – John 13:36-38 to be exact – we find Peter insisting that he’d lay down his life for his rabbi; Jesus responds, in essence: “Loyal follower, you’ll betray me. Listen for the rooster.” We know Peter does: before the cock crows he denies Jesus three times.  This same follower, however, gets another chance.  That day and every day afterward, he was given opportunities to turn and live and invite others to join him.  Peter pursued those opportunities with the whole of his being, not perfectly but faithfully. 

When confronted in Jerusalem about the uncircumcised believers he witnessed to and ate with, Peter spoke of a vision he received from God during a time of prayer.  It was a vision that guided him along that path of welcoming the outsiders.  It was a vision of acceptance, not hate; of love, not rejection.  When the voice in that vision told him to eat what the law had taught him was not clean, Peter refused. “Oh no, Master, I’ve never so much as tasted food that wasn’t kosher.”  The voice replied: “If God says it’s okay, it’s okay.”  It was the Spirit that led him to the opportunity to witness, and the Spirit working in the nonbelievers that brought them to faith.  Peter concludes, “So I ask you, if God gave the same exact gift to them as to us when we believed in the Master Jesus Christ, how could I object to God?”  Peterson’s translation concludes today’s reading from Acts with these words: “Hearing it all laid out like that, they [the circumcised believers, that is the insiders] quieted down.  And then, as it sank in, they started praising God. ‘It’s really happened! God has broken through to the other nations, opened them up to Life!’” [Peterson, p. 1990]

With the joy of resurrection light God has broken into the hardness of our world with love, and cleared the pathway to Life.  Time and again we are blessed to glimpse, in small and not so small ways the blessing of God’s love manifest around us. 

“What the world needs now….”  In the mid-sixties many high school seniors danced to that Bacharach tune; my own daughters learned it from listening to the “oldies” station (ouch!).  You remember the words, “we don’t need another mountain… meadow… [just] love, sweet love, it’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”  Easter proclaims, “What the world has now is LOVE!”  By God’s grace, LOVE to heal the deepest anger; reconcile the greatest rift; lighten the heaviest load of grief. 

Out of curiosity I Google-d the first line of that old song, just to see what came up. There were links to sites related to the song and various folks who’ve sung it over the years, and also links to other sites. 

• One proclaimed, “What the world needs now is DDT.” The 2004 article went on to explain how renewing the use of DDT in a small town in South Africa seemed to reduce the incidence of malaria cases; what has the reputation of killer in the US is a lifesaver there. 
• Another stated, “What the world needs now is art, sweet art.” Lamenting in a 2005 article about global warming that the matter was simply too huge for people to grasp, the author suggested that the use of movies and other works of art to carry the message helped people connect more directly with the need to “be more green.”  It was also interesting to read one person’s response: until we in the USA set aside the green of greed as our primary motivation (that is, profit), we will never truly heed the call to be ecologically green.
• What the world needs now is truth – that sent me to a campus ministry website for Cornell University, where smiling faces reminded students of every ilk, including post-graduate researchers, that the Word of Life is every bit as important as the words of their studies.

Jesus’ command to love one another is a call to live actively engaged in relationship with our neighbor and with the world God has entrusted to us.  It is a call for the separation of church and hate in all its forms. This is not the easiest road to take.  Neither was the road of the cross Jesus took.  But it is the only way to the fullness of Life – for LOVE opens the heart to HOPE. 

We fear what we do not understand.  When we judge the lifestyles of others, imposing our values, standards and expectations instead of seeking to learn about theirs and consider what might be in their best interests, we are operating out of hate.  When we draw lines refusing to dialog or even pray in the same room with those whose faith teachings are other than Christian, the hostility that emanates goes against the hospitality of love that Jesus modeled.  When we are silent in the face of grief related to losses of any form – whether from changes in worship or from being a nation at war, from loss of mobility or apparent loss of morality – when we are silent in the face of such pain, when we pull away from each other instead of daring to open ourselves to dialog, that unresolved grief becomes manifest in other ways -- sometimes in anger, sometimes in separation; while we in the church may not intend it, to those on the outside that looks like hate.

Love won’t erase the pain or hurt or grief -- whether in Kansas or at Virginia Tech, or among lives decimated in the Middle East or in Albuquerque – love can’t erase that grief and pain.  Love simply makes HOPE real.

What the world HAS now is love -- God in Christ has already paved the way.  All we need do is follow.

Amen