Sermon for May 18, 2025
Today is the fifth Sunday of Easter. Jesus is risen. (He
is Risen Indeed) In today’s Gospel reading, he told us how we are to behave by
giving a new commandment to love one another just like he loves us. This
reading is before the crucifixion, stressing his new commandment of loving one
another as he loved us. He is about to completely blow the collective minds of
mankind by defeating death, but first he tells us to love one another just as
he loves us. Pretty tall order, far beyond what the disciples could understand
at that point. But he had to tell them so they could begin understanding as
everything unfolded. If we check our
love meter as the church in 2025 I’m not sure we are loving each other as he
loved us. I’m not going to tell you anything new today, but just make a
reminder so we do check our love meter as a church and as individuals. We still
seem to think we can put parameters on who and how we love. That’s not how
Jesus loves us. He loves us completely, with all our sins and faults so we need
to love others in that same way. That’s pretty radical, impartial love. Love without favoritism.
All
right. Before I get ahead of myself, let’s look at the context of today’s
Gospel reading. It starts with “31 When he was gone,
Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is
glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him,[a] God will glorify the Son in
himself, and will glorify him at once.” The “he was gone” guy in verse 31 is
Judas. Jesus had just told Judas in verse 27 “’What you are about to do, do
quickly.’ 28 But no one at the meal understood why
Jesus said this to him. 29 Since Judas had charge
of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed
for the festival, or to give something to the poor. 30 As
soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.” Jesus knew Judas
was about to betray him and he was ready to get it over with. Remember, Jesus
is fully human and fully God so he knew, better than Judas, what was about to
happen, but he was also fully prepared for it to happen. It’s hard to imagine
having that sort of physical exhaustion along with that sort of foreknowledge.
If you think about it, it should give cause to really love that guy. His love
toward us is simply unreal.
From the
Psalm, vs. 5: Let them praise the name of the Lord,
for at his command they were created,
6 and he established them for ever and ever—
he issued a decree that will never pass away.
His love
wasn’t just in that moment extended to his disciples and Judas, but to all of
us: a decree that will never pass away. He knew what was coming, the brutality
of his own death, yet he also knew that that would not conquer him. It was in a
way (a very small way) like what I go through when I do these sermons: I feel like
doing anything else, but knowing I’ll get through it just fine. While I really
love having written, I’m not a big fan of the writing part. I’ve heard a lot of
writers say that. And I’m sure Jesus would have rather not have had to go
through the crucifixion as a man, but as the son of God, he wanted to do it for
all of us. Again, simply unreal, his love for us. And I whine about little
medical procedures like getting shots in my eye! Sometimes we really lack
perspective.
And just
a quick side note about Judas. I really think Jesus loved him just as fully as
he loves all of us and the rest of his disciples. He didn’t just choose him to
be a disciple for nothing. He knew Judas for who he was, yet he still loved
him. He still died for him. What happened had to happen for his love to fully
extend to all of us in its eternal way. I know some people like to think of
Judas as worse than Satan but I can’t really think of him like that. We already
know how he ended up feeling about it all, committing suicide. It’s part of the
anguish of the entire story: radical love extended to every one of us, but we
don’t all accept it.
Do you
ever wonder why God would love us enough to actually become human and die a
human death to free us from our own death to live forever? What a crazy gift
that is. But he created us in his image and loved us from the very beginning,
endowing us with intelligence and creativity, interacting with us in the most
miraculous of ways unlike any other part of his creation. We are a little more
special to him than that bookshelf you might have made for your spouse, or that
pot you might have really enjoyed making. He created us with the ability to
interact with him, to talk to him. We weren’t made to collect dust while
moldering books sit on our shelves or to accidentally be shattered into pieces.
Even when those sorts of things do happen to us—yes, some of us have been
shattered, some of us might feel as we’d been forgotten with the old books and
dust—he is still there, picking us up, dusting us off, putting us back together
just for the asking. He really does love us. We are his beloved creation and we
need to recognize that in every other person and every other part of His
creation. But, as we all know, we don’t always do that. Sin has corrupted us,
no doubt. He’s also taken care of that.
Let’s
take a look at the reading from Revelation, what He revealed to John, and
through John to us:
21 Then
I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”[a] for the first heaven and the first
earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I
saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from
God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And
I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now
among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people,
and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He
will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[b] or mourning or crying or
pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
5 He
who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then
he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
6 He
said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning
and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring
of the water of life.
There it
is. The restoration of the broken pot, the rebuilding of the old book case. A
new heaven and new earth for us. This is our hope and our faith. It is not an
excuse to resign ourselves to the way things are now and just having something
to look forward to. We are here right now, alive because of Him, our creator. The
shackles of our sin have been removed and we are called to bring everyone into His
radical, extravagant love. The love that is with us right now, right here, not
in reserve for the new heaven and earth, but right here and now.
Look at
how he revealed that to Peter, the rock of our church, a pretty orthodox Jew
who spread the good news, the gospel, to we gentiles. From Acts 11: The
apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also
had received the word of God. 2 So when Peter went
up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him 3 and
said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.”
4 Starting
from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story: 5 “I
was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw
something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners,
and it came down to where I was. 6 I looked into it
and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles and birds. 7 Then
I heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’
8 “I
replied, ‘Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my
mouth.’
9 “The
voice spoke from heaven a second time, ‘Do not
call anything impure that God has made clean.’ 10 This
happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again.
11 “Right
then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house
where I was staying. 12 The Spirit told me to
have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also
went with me, and we entered the man’s house. 13 He
told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, ‘Send to
Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. 14 He will
bring you a message through which you and all your household will be
saved.’
15 “As
I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the
beginning. 16 Then I remembered what the Lord had
said: ‘John baptized with[a] water, but you will be baptized with[b] the Holy Spirit.’ 17 So
if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord
Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?”
18 When
they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So
then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.”
We know
that Peter always had an exuberant spirit for Jesus, but he also wavered in a big
way when it came time to stand up for Jesus, even denying he knew Him, not
once, but three times. Peter had put up his religious parameters on how to
live, certainly to eat nothing unclean like the gentiles. But God made it very
clear: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” And guess how
many times this happened? Three! We are Peter. We are the church, and we
sometimes think we know enough about people to know they are “unclean.”
Thankfully, God is gentle and willing to repeat Himself to us. And who did he
die for? Not just Jews. Not just Christians. (There were no “Christians” in the
sense that there are now.) He died for all who have sinned. All of us. Jew,
gentile, Asian, American, European, African, men, women, gay, straight,
married, divorced. All of us. We’re all impure but He has made us clean. Remember
Peter? Do not call anything impure that
God has made clean. This is the radical, impartial, perfect love of God for
all of us. No parameters.
And that
brings me right back to Jesus, just after Judas had gone: 34 “A
new command I give you: Love one another. As
I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By
this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
And
remember what I said about us being Peter and that we are the church? We are
the body of Christ, our Lord. We may not be made perfect yet, but we have a new
commandment to love one another. That’s how we spread the gospel, not by coming
to church by itself, or any other thing that we do, except loving one another.
It
sounds so simple, but I’m not going to lie. I really struggle these days with
some Christians, and I have no doubt they struggle with me. I can’t believe,
for instance, that the public school system is “grooming” children with
inappropriate library books, or indoctrinating them with critical race theory,
and Christians that say those kinds of things can really get under my skin. But
I hope I’m getting better about defending the profession from which I’ve
retired while still loving the people that say those kinds of things. I don’t
want to break fellowship or friendships over falsehoods. I believe in radical
love, and sometimes I believe in bleeding tongues from biting them as much as I
believe in tongues of fire.
I know
we all have our little irritations with our brothers and sister, but if Jesus
can love me, I need to show my brothers and sisters grace and forgiveness and
love. That doesn’t have to mean being completely silent because part of love
includes dispelling lies and separating them from truth. It also involves
recognizing that we all still walk in our own shadows of doubt and ignorance.
It probably comes as no surprise to any of you that a retired school teacher
believes that part of loving includes seeking truth through research and
knowledge. I sometimes think the New Heaven is going to be a huge library (with
large print books, or these eyes made perfect) and the New Earth is going to be
beautiful temperate forests with perfect hiking trails. (I could never make
sense of streets of gold…)
While it
may seem like I’m getting off track, my point is that the new commandment is
not exclusive, even while we all have our little quirks that can easily clash
with others. Some people would not want to go to a heaven with libraries at all
and others might want a new earth to be completely tropical. Should we not love
those people because of that? Of course, we should. We are called to love
everyone and our love will let others know we are Christians. It’s not our list
of rules that spreads the good news of the gospel, it is our love. That’s the
good news anyway: radical, impartial love. The love that comes from our God, the
one who saves us from ourselves. Just as He loves us, we are called to love His
creation, the creation that He died for, the creation that His death through
the resurrection has purified. “As I have loved you, so you must love one
another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are
my disciples, if you love one another.” These are the words of our Lord. The
perfectly radical, impartial love of our Lord. Jesus is Risen. (He is risen
indeed.)
Amen.
