Some of
you may remember that back on Epiphany we handed out stars with words on them.
These words were intended to be a suggestion for a way to be reminded of God’s self-revelation
in Jesus. They were meant to be a guiding principle for the year as we follow
Jesus together. My “star word” was “devotion.”
You may
think that is a pretty easy one for me. To some extent, I suppose it is, but it
also acts as a constant reminder that just because I wear a collar on Sundays
doesn’t mean that my life has been completely given over to God. I still have
to ask myself over and over the same question that Jesus asks Peter. Do I truly
love God? Are my actions demonstrating that love? Is the quality of my
relationships reflecting that love?
These
are questions that we must all ask ourselves over and over again. I would even
suggest that it’s one of the reasons you are here today. Maybe you came or
thought you came, to get some answers and make sense out of life. I hope you
get a little of that, too. Unfortunately
Jesus does often answer a question with a question, and today the question is, “Do
you love him?”
That
maybe moving a little fast in your relationship with Jesus. It may also be a
question that is long overdue. I can’t answer that for you. What I can tell you
about today is that today we are confronted in the same way we were on Epiphany
Sunday with the question “Now what?”
Sometime
back a friend of mine introduced me to a way of processing experiences by three
questions, “What just happened?”, “So, what does it matter?” and “Now what?” We
know what just happened. This is the third time in John that Jesus has appeared
to his disciples after his death. Last week we talked about why the
resurrection matters. Sin and death have been conquered, and faith in the risen
Christ should move us to life-affirming action.
So, now
what? We’re in the “Now what?” of Easter. For some, particularly a guy named Saul,
it meant open season on believers. So far all we know about Saul from Acts is
that he approved of the stoning of Stephen. He held the coats of those that
threw rocks. He must have some level of authority – we later find out that he
is a Pharisee – because he gets a letter from the priest allowing him to round
up others that follow the way of Jesus to have them bound and carted off to
Jerusalem.
How
much worse of a response could you have to the news that Jesus Christ is risen?
Maybe he had not heard that part yet. He certainly heard it on the way to
Damascus. Apparently, even those he traveled with heard it, but he was the one
blinded by the light of this truth. He was the one that God chose to share the
good news of it all because he was the one that was standing the most strongly
in the way.
What
strikes me as even more interesting is the people who took him in and guided
him on his way. Maybe their names were pretty common, but the inn keeper’s name
was Judas, and the disciple who came to him was Ananias. Judas was, of course, the name of the disciple who betrayed him, and Ananias was the name of a man
who God struck dead for his lack of faith in Acts 5.
Maybe
these are just common names. Maybe the story is bent on demonstrating
redemptive love over and over again as the way of Jesus unfolds for us as well.
Either way, I love Ananias’ response to God’s call. “That guy? Lord are you
sure you have the right person. This is Saul, the one dragging families out of
their homes to stand trial.”
It
occurs to me that the likelihood that you and I will face something like this
is pretty unlikely, and yet every day it seems that people are more at odds
over religion. Every day it seems that
people become more unsure if the Christianity that we proclaim is the same as
the one down the street. It’s certainly true that there are violent attacks in
other parts of the world, but what about the discord and fracture that is the
church here and now?
Dietrick
Bonhoeffer in the classic text, Life Together, talks about the difficulty
of finding a true, spiritual community in a time leading up to Nazi Germany.
Rather than invoking the specter of the Nazi’s, I think it’s important to
acknowledge that what he has to say about our life together is that it is
always and ever an approximation of what God intends for us in the long run. In
fact, he says that the right and proper place for Christians is “among enemies.”
In Christ, God came to dwell with those who were hostile to God.
The
right, good, and proper place for us is not hiding behind locked doors for fear
of the world, but out in it. The right place for us is to be where we have the
opportunity to say, “God, are you sure you’ve got the right person, here? That
person’s views and values are actually threatening to me.” If we are asking
that question, then we are probably in the right place, and we are probably
going to hear Jesus say, “Do you love me?”
Jesus
asked Peter that question three times, and I have to wonder if Peter connected
that with his three denials of Jesus. Remember now, at this point, the
disciples are well past asking, “What now?” They’ve seen the risen Lord! Mary
was the first, and she was told not to hold onto him. Then they all saw him.
Thomas even demanded to touch his wounds, and Jesus had filled them with the
Holy Spirit.
Yet,
somehow, they decided to go fishing. Maybe they ran out of money. Maybe they
were waiting on Jesus to Finnish what he had started. Whatever they thought,
what they were doing was returning to their old lives. Then Jesus shows up and
says, “How’s that working for you?”
Here’s
what matters in all of this. There’s no question as to whether God is active
and present in our lives. The question is whether we are willing to acknowledge
it. Jumping into God’s embrace, like Peter and his swan dive for Jesus, can be
risky and disruptive, but it always moves us to see the abundance of God’s
grace and mercy that is already active in our lives.
That
doesn’t mean that if we just pray, we’re going to end up with a pot full of
cash or that we aren’t responsible for what we do. It means that God’s
forgiveness, God’s love, God’s rescue of our very souls are at hand. It means
God’s grace is celebrated in tiny streams of water, even though it is as big as
an ocean. It means that when we come to God, we will find that our needs are
already being considered, and it means that when we love God, we must love
others in the same way.
Wait,
what? How did you slip that one in at the end there, preacher man? Hey, don’t
blame me. Blame Jesus. He’s the one who said, “Love others as I have loved you.”
and then, “If you love me, feed my sheep.”
We can,
and hopefully will spend our lives together working out what that means, but
this I know for sure: We have been given one another to work it out together.
God’s calling may be disruptive. God’s active presence may be disturbing and
uncomfortable, but it comes with the promise of grace. It comes with the
offering of the covenant. The covenant of God’s grace never requires us to earn it,
but it always results in our desire to love in the way we’ve been loved.
If our
spiritual communion is real and true, it always pushes us to grab hands and
love even the one – perhaps especially the one – who would reject and harm us
the most. Even a brief internet search can show you plenty of occasions of
people overcoming white supremacy or crossing political and religious lines
because of a desire to be governed by love. It doesn’t sell ad space. It’s few
and far between, but it’s out there.
I want
to leave you instead with two different experiences that have confronted me
with the question of God’s love. The first is from my grandmother, Margaret
Sasser. She was a great woman of faith. In one of our visits, while I was in seminary,
she prayed for me. She said, “Lord, I know you love Zachary, and I know he
loves you.” That was new, un-seminarified, the pure language of faith, and it made
me realize that yes, I do love the Lord. It also holds me accountable to this
day of how I must love others because I love the Lord.
The last example I’ll share is from a Middle School retreat in Virginia called at
Massanetta Springs. It’s an amazing experience that blends adult and High
School student leaders to model discipleship for Middle Schoolers. Before each
event, the “Middlers” are gathered outside of the pavilion. There’s a hill
sloping upward to meet it, and one day while the last technical details were
being worked out inside, some of the leaders started a chant back and forth
with the conferees.
It was
something between a Psalm of ascent for pilgrims headed to the temple and
cheerleaders at a pep rally. The leaders shouted, “We love Jesus, yes we do! We
love Jesus, how ‘bout you?” The crowd repeated the phrase back, and it got
louder and louder as more gathered for worship! It was a lot more exciting than
I thought it was going to be, but it does make me wonder. How are they loving
Jesus now?
How are
any of us? How do we take the bread that has been broken for us and become the
body of Christ that has been broken for the world? Simple. We first recognize
that we have a need, that we have received, and that God’s abundant love is
more than enough for us to share.
None of
this is without risk, but then again nothing else is either. So, thanks be to
God that we have been given each other to work it out together. The One who
came is the One who ascended. The One who ascended is the One we cannot hold because it is Christ who holds us together. As the Body of Christ, we must be
broken for the world, so that everyone – even those we call enemy – might know
of God’s abundant grace and mercy and love.
With
full bellies and full hearts, the question remains, do you love Jesus? Let us,
then, be about the business of tending the sheep together. Amen.
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