The first reading is Acts 10:44-48.
The second reading is 1 John 5:1-6.
The holy gospel according to John (15:9-17)
Jesus said:
9“As
the Father has loved me,
so
I have loved you;
abide in my love.
10If
you keep my commandments,
you
will abide in my love,
just
as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and
abide in my Father’s love.
11I
have said these things to you so that my
joy may be in you,
and
that your joy may be complete.
12“This
is my commandment,
that
you love one another as I have loved you.
13No
one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
14You
are my friends if you do what I command you.
15I
do not call you servants any longer,
because
the servant does not know what the master is doing;
but
I have called you friends,
because
I have made known to you everything
that
I have heard from my Father.
16You
did not choose me but I chose you.
And
I appointed you to go and bear fruit,
fruit
that will last,
so
that the Father will give you whatever you ask
in
my name.
17I
am giving you these commands
so that you may love one another.
The gospel of the lord.
-----
This Easter season has been all about love. Our gospel readings have been almost
exclusively Jesus’ words in John, a last conversation before the crucifixion
where Jesus boils it down to the essentials: love. Abide, live,
dwell deeply in Jesus’ love and in doing so that love will move through you to
others. Abiding in the love of God
brings that love into all areas of our lives.
God’s love covers the whole world—all of creation. As I’ve watched the news the last few
weeks and even over the last year, I wonder what it looks like to abide in
God’s love in the world as it is.
Today is a day that comes with a mixed bag of emotions. Some rejoice to celebrate and be
celebrated. Some are acutely aware
of their inability to be a mother or don’t have that desire. Our own relationships both with our
mothers and those who have been like mothers to us and with our children, those
for whom we have had a motherly or parental role, are not always easy, not
always healthy, and not always fun.
Yes, we should celebrate those who care for and nurture new generations
as we do on Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day, but there’s more to our Mothers’ Day
remembrances than you might think.
The origin of Mothers’ Day is not simply roses, breakfast in
bed, jewelry or creative drawings.
Mother’s Day began after the Civil War, in response to it. Protesting the violence of the war and
the toll that it took on the whole country and on women especially, Julia Ward
Howe made a Mothers’ Day Proclamation.
And so it is fitting for us to ponder how painful today must
be for Freddie Gray’s mom Gloria or Michael Brown’s mom Lesley, Eric Garner’s
mom Gwen, Darrien Hunt’s mom Susan, Tamir Rice’s mom Samaria, Akai Gurley’s mom
Sylvia, Wenjian Liu’s mom Xiu Yan, Rafael Ramos’ wife Maritza, a
single mother for the first time this mother’s day. These unarmed men and boys are just a few of the many who
lost their lives this year.
Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos also lost their lives while eating lunch in
their patrol car while on duty in New York.
Many mothers have lost children this year to violence. It is a pandemic throughout the world
from children in Nigeria taken by Boko Haram to those losing their lives in
Ukraine and the Middle East, to our own country and community.
How do we abide in Jesus’ love when people are dying, when
mothers—parents—mourn the death of their children, when hearts are breaking
again and again.
In the ELCA Facebook group this week, someone asked “If I am already working to make a difference in the world by doing good
things (bearing fruit), why do I need to abide in Jesus?” There were a variety of answers to the
question. If Bp. Eaton had
responded, I imagine she would have reminded us, as she did during our synod
assembly downtown last weekend, that the ELCA and, indeed, the whole church is
not a social service agency that happens to also have sacraments. And that is true. We don’t do acts of service or charity
or even work for justice and peace first and then worship.
We
worship God because God first loves us.
We abide in God’s love, which enables us to abide in love with
others. The work we do in the
world is an extension of our worship, a response to God’s love. What happens here on Sundays in worship
informs the other six days of the week.
When we give thanks for the gift of baptism, we hear Peter’s words in
Acts, asking “Can anyone withhold the
water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as
we have?”
God’s
love is poured out in the waters of baptism. Abiding in God’s love is abiding in our baptismal identities
as God’s beloved children and joining Peter in asking “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing?” Can anyone withhold God’s love from all
people? Can anyone keep God’s love
from spilling out when we worship a God who is love?
So,
our tasks are simple:
Abide in God’s love: check!
Live into that love in worship: check!
But what does it mean for us, whose children are not in
danger, to love those whose children are?
When we live at a distance from the violence, can we truly abide
together in love? Can we live into
God’s love for us outside these four walls?
The reality is that we have work to do if we are going to
truly abide in Jesus’ love and abide with one another in love. Part of that work is digging deeper in
understanding the violence we see on the news as actually a symptom of violence
at work long before that. This
deeper violence is the violence of persistent economic insecurity, lack of
opportunity, and discrimination.
And yet, Jesus calls us to abide in his love. In worship we work to abide in God’s
love, to abide in Jesus, loving the full diversity of God’s children. When we abide in God’s love, we dig
deep into the faith and the grace that sustains us, which enables us to dig
deep into figuring out what separates us from God and from each other. God’s grace gives us the freedom to do
the work, digging down to the deeper, more subtle issues at play in our
society, the issues that leave mothers without children year after year.
In that work to which Jesus calls us, the work of abiding in
love and truth, that love begins to seep and even flood out—supporting Family
Promise, making blankets for children in need, welcoming those who have been
historically excluded from the church is just the beginning. The love floods out in recognition of
injustice and discrimination as we ask with Peter, Can anyone withhold God’s
love? Can anyone withhold the
water for baptizing?
No!
God
doesn’t withhold anything and we cannot withhold God. God comes to us, becomes incarnate, becomes human! Not only that, God becomes one of the
oppressed, one whose land is occupied by others, who faces an uphill struggle
economically. God in Jesus becomes
the oppressed for us, for the ways that we are oppressed and for the ways that
we contribute to others’ oppression.
God in Jesus comes to us to upend the systems that destroy us and
others, to break down the walls that divide us into oppressed and
oppressor. Jesus breaks the bonds
that harm us, that keep us from abiding in his love and abiding with each other
in the expansive love of God.
Jesus pours out his life, his blood for us and for all people without
exception.
Thanks
be to God!
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