Sermon preached by the Reverend Nicholas Lang, Rector

St. Paul’s on the Green, Norwalk, Connecticut

5^th Sunday of Easter, May 6, 2007

May new life spring forth in every place, the branches of healing grace reach out toward the places of pain, and God, Creator, Christ, and Holy Sprit be our foundation. Amen.

A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin, age 5, and Ryan, age 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson about love. “If Jesus were sitting here, he would say ‘Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.’” Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, “Ryan, you be Jesus.”

What does love look like? It has been described by poets and philosophers and musicians and theologians. It has been expressed in many different ways: “Love is blind.” “Love is like war: Easy to begin but hard to end.” “Love doesn’t make the world go round, love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” “Love is patient. Love is kind.” Love is a bubble in the head.” “Love is a many splendored thing.”

We talk of “falling in love” as if it were a hole. We say we love apple pie as easily as we say we love our significant other. In My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle cries out in a frustration: “Words, words, words! I’m so tired of words. Don’t talk to me of love, don’t talk to me of June, don’t talk to me about anything at all, just show me.” What does love look like?

The short Gospel passage we read today is a snippet of the longer discourse Jesus gave to his friends gathered for a meal on the night before he died. Recall that, in this very setting, he took a basin of water and towel and washed their feet – a sign of utter humility. Washing the feet of one’s guests was the duty of the lowest servant or slave in that household. For the guest, it was an act of welcoming and respect. But for the servant, it was an affirmation of the low and despicable place that person held in society. Only the rich would have been able to afford servants who would wash their guests’ feet. Jesus not only did this for all of them – including the person who would betray him and one who would three times deny knowing him – but he told them that they must be about washing the feet of others.

Even those whose perspective of who Jesus was and what he meant for the world is purely humanistic, and who recognize him as no more than a symbol of profound goodness rather than God’s Son, can see in this act and in the words he offers us an example of a radically loving heart. Already harassed by the religious leaders of his time and aware that they have set out to kill him, he speaks not with rage or about retaliation nor does he lash out at his enemies with vindictive language. Rather he talks about unconditional love and gives them this new commandment that they love another as he has loved them.

And it was, perhaps, not merely the powerful witness of his resurrection and the demonstrative preaching of the disciples that attracted so many to the fledgling church communities of the first century but what they observed in the lives and behaviors of its first members. An early Christian writer, Tertullian, claims that pagans often made the comment ‘See how these Christians love one another’. What does love look like?

When Jesus gave us that new commandment, it was not a mere suggestion or nice idea he was sharing. Nor was it some good advice. It was his farewell command and climactic instruction on the eve of his death on the cross. These were words to be taken seriously as are any words from one who is about to die for the sake of others.

Love is what Christians do. The litmus test for authentic Christianity is not based on how much scripture we know or how much sin we did or did not commit but on how successfully we have kept that new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus wanted to be sure that the world would recognize us in the act.

What does love look like? Does it seem strange that in a nation which many of our leaders affirm was built on a Christian foundation and – whether or not history substantiates that fact – does it not seem strange that we need laws to protect people against hate crimes? Not just laws that define murder and theft and forgery and libel as criminal acts but laws that protect people from being denigrated, abused, assaulted, even killed solely because they are somehow different or believe differently or don’t meet a certain standard – society’s “A” list.

Yet you and I know that we do need anti-hate legislation to prevent more murders like that of James Byrd, the African-American tied to a truck and dragged to death in Texas or Matthew Shepherd, the gay college student beaten and left to die in freezing temperatures on a fence in Wyoming, or Alia Ansari, an Afghan American mother of six shot at point-blank range in California because she was wearing a head scarf, the garment of her faith.

Living in liberal, educated, affluent Fairfield County, we have our head deep in the sand if we think that racism, anti-semitism, and all the other “isms” and “phobias” are not alive and well throughout the land. And if we look at the reading from the Act of the Apostles today we find intolerance was present there as well. The good news that Paul and Barnabas are preaching is now being shared with gentiles – people who look, act, and are different. The inclination to marginalize people who are not exactly like us is as old as the hills.

Thomas Merton once wrote that “The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only reflections of ourselves we find in them.”

What does love look like? Our new Presiding Bishop Katherine says it looks like “getting out of the way, so another person can try. Blood, sweat, and tears. Feeding one another. Above all, love set us free to be more than we thought possible.” “Loving one another,” she contines, “doesn’t mean we have to like everyone, but it does imply treating everyone with dignity, looking for ways to liberate ourselves and others for greater life, and it means continuing in relationship even when we disagree about almost everything. It also means continuing to expand the guest list – looking for those who haven’t enjoyed enough love.”

We can’t guarantee that the world or our nation or even our city will keep this new commandment as Jesus asked us to. Indeed, we do need laws to ensure that people will not be harmed because of who they are or what they believe. But the one place, maybe the only place where God demands that authentic Christianity is found is the church. Sadly, that is not always the case and I suspect that God will not look favorably on places where religion is like counterfeit currency. Jesus asks, no Jesus demands the real thing: “By this will everyone know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1940’s, put it well when he said that the Church is the only human institution that exists primarily for the benefit of those outside it. So if the world wants to know what love looks like, it better be able to end its search right here in this and every local expression of Christ’s Church.

You and I know what it means to love because at some time or another being a part of this community has allowed us to be on the receiving end of it. We have created and continue to honor a culture here that empowers each one of us to be the person God created us to be and gives us the permission and freedom to do just that. Episcopal author and psychotherapist, John Fortunato, has expressed it this way: “Once you know, at the core of your being, that you have a rightful place in God’s creation, that nothing can separate you from the love of God, then it doesn’t much matter what people say or do to you. Then you are fee to give and love – anyway.”

There is a story told of Archbishop Desmond Tutu who was walking by a construction site on a temporary sidewalk the width of one person. A white man appeared at the other end, recognized Tutu, and said, “I don’t make way for gorillas.” At which Tutu stepped aside, made a sweeping gesture, and said, “Ah, yes, but I do.”

What does love look like? I think it looks very much like food for the poor, shelter for the homeless, friendship for the lonely, protection for the endangered, an embrace for the worried, justice for the downtrodden, healthcare for those without, welcome for the marginalized, warmth for the unlovable, safety for the battered, an arm on the shoulder of the frightened, an outspoken voice on behalf of the reticent. Love, in the end, transcends words. It is always something you do.

I think it looks like Jesus and how he lived and died and what he taught us to do in his name. I think it looks like the Kingdom of God – the world we have been asked to build brick by brick, step by step, so that no one escapes this planet without experiencing at least a taste of what heaven is like.

Love is what we do when we are living and breathing the Gospel. Above all, love set us free to be more than we thought possible. It’s pretty darn hard to miss if when we see it in action.