Acts 10:44–48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1–6
John 15:9–17
Year B
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
We are stronger and more energizing to those who know us if we show ourselves to be a community built on love.
Does this sound trite to you? Love is mentioned in just about every other sentence in our scripture readings.
Turn on the radio or the iPod and you’ll find playlists filled with songs about love, love that satisfies either loneliness or lustfulness. The Country Song Looking for love in all the wrong places by Waylon Jennings is an oldie but goodie that you can find on YouTube. Looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces.
Turn on the TV and you’ll find advertisements that urge you to love this show and its quirky but cool characters, the home team, or the most scrumptious new food. “You’ll love it,” the voice coos. Yesterday I heard a commercial for Subaru that ended Love a Subaru. And I read this on autoblog.com: Thanks to Subaru's newest marketing campaign, we finally know what really makes a Subaru a Subaru. Love. Really? Allow Tim Mahoney, chief marketing officer for Subaru of America, to explain, "Love is the most powerful emotion and 'I love my Subaru' is the most used phrase I hear about our brand. We wanted to show the bond between Subaru owners and their cars through this work."
I think these examples of love show how pervasive love is used in our culture. This is largely individualistic and exploits emotions and artificial satisfaction.
I want to talk about how the love of Jesus grabs hold of his disciples, the early Christian church, and abides with us here today. It’s built to last. It fosters mutuality and breaks down division. It builds community.
The kind of love that builds community is one that seeks the best in the other.
The kind of love that builds community is one that overturns assumptions that a certain kind of person is not worthy of attention, or inclusion.
The kind of love that builds community is where you can look at someone you never figured you could ever call friend, and yet you do.
This love is a radical act.
These ideas of love totally messed up Peter, who was so sure that he had a corner on the gospel that he had to be really convinced that those who not Jewish and who were not circumcised could be included in the messianic movement. This is in the aftermath of Jesus’ resurrection, ascension, and giving of the Holy Spirit in the Book of Acts. We heard the climax of the story about transforming and community-building love in today’s First Reading, where the outcome is the gift of the Holy Spirit , baptism, and community-building as Cornelius, a Gentile seeker of God met Peter the uber apostle who was finally convinced that Cornelius could be included in the Christian fold.
The story is told in chapter 10 of Acts, where Peter was faced with a vision that told him to kill and eat these repugnant non-kosher animals (imagine seeing flying pigs!). Actually, Peter had to see reruns, because he saw the same vision three times. And after the thrice-viewed vision, Peter heard the concluding refrain also three times: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
It’s a hilariously engaging story, because as soon as the vision disappears it says as Peter was scratching his head about what he had experienced, men sent by the non-Jew soldier Cornelius came up to where he was staying looking for him. And the Spirit whispered in his ear “go meet these men without any hesitation because I have sent them.” Do you think there is going to be a connection between the vision and the meeting with Cornelius? Duh! I wonder!
Eventually Cornelius the soldier Gentile that Peter the Jew (and apostle) meet face to face, which is not the way things are supposed to be, like sworn enemies shoved into the same room and told to make up. Peter said something like “you know we are not supposed to be together in the same room, but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean. So when I was sent I came without objection” (he probably didn’t have much time to think!). And he said to Cornelius, “how about you?” Cornelius told Peter that as he was praying someone told him to meet a guy named Peter. And he said to Peter something like, “So what have you got to say about all this?”
Peter began to rehearse his sermon with the tag line “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in very nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” He begins to articulate that his job is to bear witness that Jesus, in his doing good and healing and even through his dying and rising, is bigger than anyone ever thought and that believing in him breaks down barriers in large part through forgiveness. Peter did not get to finish his sermon because where our reading begins it says “while Peter was speaking, the Holy Spirit fell (which is good news for many people, that the sermon would be cut short to let in the Holy Spirit).
So then we come to today’s story from the book of Acts where the shocker is that the gift of the Holy Spirit and baptism and community is spread to those you would not expect.
And now I will repeat with what I started, that the community of the early church is suddenly strengthened as it is built on love, and that remains or abides for us today.
If you would have told me two years ago that Tina Reynolds would become passionate about refugees, I would not have predicted it. Two years ago, she ran half a marathon by herself to raise money for New Americans that are given a new life through the work of Lutheran Social Services of New England. She raised $3,000! This year, she is inviting us at CtK to be part of a Bike Rally to foster more support. Do you think this is something a community in Jesus would do to break open and build on love in a surprising way?
If you would have told me eight years ago that I would be encouraging people to write letters to their congress representatives to reform foreign aid, I would have been surprised to think it. It has taken the persistent vision of Deirdra and those working at Bread for the World to teach me that this annual effort is really worth doing as a community of faith. Here’s one talking point: revising nutritional standards for the most vulnerable children between six and 24 months will make a huge difference, because the United States supplies nearly half of all international food aid, almost all of it in-kind rather than cash. The organizations that distribute the aid are handicapped, because what they get, fortified blended flours based on wheat or corn plus soya—do not meet their minimum nutritional needs. In the 1980’s, when the U.S. dairy commodity surpluses dried up, the highly effective supplement that is milk-based was not available. Why would we give malnourished children in the developing world food we would never give to our own children? Clearly we need some new strategies in food aid. It’s good and godly, wouldn’t you say?
If you would have told me twenty years ago that I would be preaching about the love that God has for us today, I would have believed it! But I would ask, how is this love not bandied about like a country song or a commercial for a car, but instead is enacted so that our own fears about those we welcome become opportunities to find friends, in refugees, unknown children in Africa, the CtK newcomer who is not like any we have seen before, or the person next to us whom we have never introduced ourselves to?
And I’m still asking it today. What are your stories? Jesus calls those who follow him friends, and asks us likewise to love one another, abide in his love, don’t claim power over like masters and slaves, and allow joy to be inside and filling up.
I say Tina and her Bike Rally is a great example. I say this Offering of Letters ideas is energizing. I say bread and wine offered to all who yearn for Christ’s love, young and old, from all walks of life is central to our community.
Because we are stronger and more energizing to those who know us if we show ourselves to be a community built on love.Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
The Rev. Timothy J. Keyl, Pastor
Christ the King Lutheran Church
| CtK Home
| Back to Pastor's Page
|