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Peter JB Carman
A Communion Meditation
offered at
Emmanuel Friedens Church
Schenectady New York
May 6, 2018
Reading: John 15:9-17 (NRSV)
15:9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.
15:10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.
15:11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
15:12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
15:13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.
15:14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15:15 I 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.
15:16 You 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 him in my name.
15:17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
I.
It is up to every generation to shape a community’s life together. A few weeks ago, your Church Council met in the pastor’s living room to talk about this year’s priorities, where we are headed as a church. We talked about our aspirations, and who we are at our best. Marilyn Bisgrove was there and spoke briefly with simplicity and wisdom. She offered three words about what God is inviting us more fully to be. The three words she offered were: “A Community of Friends”.
We heard today in our New Testament reading essential words about living as a community of friends. They aren’t long, these words from John’s gospel, but they provide a lens for getting it about all the rest of the bible. If we let them, they can profoundly reshape this life together that we call Christianity. They are from John’s version of the conversation between Jesus and his disciples on the night just before the Passover, when he was about to be betrayed. The conversation starts in the 13th chapter, introduced with these words: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” These words are part of the last will and testament of a man who is about to be captured and done in.
The architecture of John 15:9-17 is clear, summarized in the first verse: “Abide in my love”. I know what it is to be loved, says Jesus. And now you also know what it is to be loved. Because with the same love that my Abba—the Parent who sent me-- has loved me, I have loved you. Abide in my love, remain in that love.
For a moment it may sound confusing—Jesus uses the language of “commandments”—and commandment isn’t how we usually think about friends dealing with each other. But there is only one final command here. Love one another. Not a long list of rules and regulations. Just the single best and hardest summons of all: Abide in my love by loving one another. God who sent me has loved me; I have shared that same love with you, and I am laying down my life for you. So now it is up to you! Love one another.
Christ does not call us to some servant-like uncomprehending obedience—he is summoning his friends to utter commitment, to a mature and fearless faith: “I 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…”
I have shared, says Jesus, everything I know, everything I have received from God—shared it freely with you. That is the nature of the love between friends. We share all we know; not just know in our heads, but know in our hearts, know from our experiences: our most difficult, most lovely experiences.
We abide in Christ’s love, which is to say in God’s love, which is inseparable from very very human love—the love of friends. To be friends with one another, friends with Christ, is to be the mature children of God. And that changes everything.
II.
Writing with the clarity that so often is granted to saints living behind bars, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in prison and awaiting his execution in Nazi Germany, had this to say, that catches part of the spirit of Christ’s words. He wrote: “The only fruitful relation to human beings—particularly to the weak among them—is love, that is, the will to enter into and to keep community with them. God did not hold human beings in contempt but became human for their sake.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison).
Let’s consider this! If God was willing to enter into community, to become human for our sake, then we need to be real about the lovely hard thing which is being in community with one another! If Christ has been willing to share not only information, but his very self with us, claim us in holy friendship, that grace invites us to claim our own humanity, to share that experience, loving and being loved, in friendship. If God can embrace humanity fully, then we can live in a Community of Friends in the most concrete, sometimes tiny, sometimes profound ways imaginable.
For much of history, most of Christianity has defined itself in ways that are way out of line with Christ’s simple clear call. One example has been a strictly belief-centered approach to faith. For many, Christianity is reduced to doctrinal orthodoxy and an ever-expanding list of beliefs, starting with the virgin birth and including confession of the western Church’s doctrine of the Trinity. Whether you see these beliefs as elegant or dubious, the biggest thing is what this dogmatic recitation of beliefs leaves out: that first and last Christ call us into relationship. Christ invites us, each and all, personally, to come in friendship, to live in community, to share what we have, however humble. The resurrected Christ gathers us to know the love of God in our bones, through the spirit of Jesus, and through others, and then to turn and turn again, to love our neighbors…to cherish and learn from each other, to create and sustain a community of friends.
Speaking now confessionally, Christianity has also tended to ignore the profound change in how we live together that Christ invites us to…commands. It has been our collective failure: for we have not decisively rejected the world’s hierarchies nor cherished the dignity and worth of every child of God.
It isn’t that we didn’t know. We church leaders have known all along that it’s wrong, but for two thousand years our institutions have gone along with the dehumanizing dominating social structures of the day, that almost always set the few over the many. Whether it was violent sexism, or the doctrines of racial supremacy developed over centuries by colonial powers, or the simple prejudice of those with formal educations toward those excluded from the same, too often the MO of institutional Christianity has been convenient quiet in the face of love’s denial. Too often we have gone along with the crowd, protected the empire.
And yet there have always also been voices from the edges, crying out from the wilderness, speaking up from city streets, always been hearts that say no, Christ calls us to a better way. Christ surely calls us to be bold in calling the whole society to account—beginning among us, starting on the micro-level.
III.
So where does this start, for you and me? Let’s begin on the individual level. Most of us have some junk, some pain, some inner change needed if we are to be able to live more fully as children of God, as friends of Jesus.
Some of us must overcome pride, and arrogance. That’s because we grew up believing we were the ones in charge, the ones who knew it all. But, there are far fewer people who grew up that way than there are on the other end: far more of us grew up being taught that we weren’t so hot. Many of us grew up with serious deficiencies in the department of… friendship. So, we need to be honest about brokenness of all kinds.
Rather than beating up on ourselves, more of us, far more of us, must begin with affirmation, acknowledging that you and I have value, are worth everything to God. We need to take the time not just to talk about affirmation as a principle—but to actually affirm each other, on behalf of God, on behalf of our friend Jesus.
Despite being broken people we are precious to God and to each other. We see that preciousness in the eyes of our children, and our fellow worshipers--- and we insist on it in the church parking lot and in the cubicles, offices or other fields in which we live, work and play.
When we come to the communion table, some would say it’s a sacrifice, others a celebration of the real and mystical presence of Christ. Others speak of a memorial meal. But I say to you that this is a living reminder of who we have been when we were faithful—what Christ invites all humanity to strive for: a real, utterly holy, community of friends. Christ has shared that friendship with us, not to hoard but to share some more. It is in that friendship, broken and imperfect, that we find holiness and grace, strength for the journey and courage for the road ahead.