Sermon - 6th May 2007

Our culture uses the word "love" a lot. We hear it in songs, on the television, in every day life. It's one of those words where we think we know what it means; our culture certainly knows what it means. We use the word a lot - we say we are "in love" or that we love someone, or something. What we mean by the word is often the same as what our wider culture means - we have a certain feeling. In our world love is about a feeling - a sort of strange indescribable but wonderful feeling which can be a mixture of liking someone, fancying someone and being a bit obsessed by someone! All of this we mean by the word "love".

We sort of understand that "love" can mean different things in different circumstances. I love Ian in a way that is rather different to the way I love my friends. I love fudge but again that is rather different to the idea of loving my partner! We understand that romantic relationships end - often all too painfully. Very often I hear that the "love just died" and led to the relationship to end. My first serious relationship was disastrous and I felt, at its end, that the "love just died". Looking back I am not sure it was ever more than infatuation in the first place.

Jesus' view of Love

Today's Gospel reading is a little out of order from the Easter events we have been celebrating. It is from Jesus' discourse to His disciples before his crucifixion and death. We read it now, after Easter, as it helps us start to think about the qualities of community that we need in the Church - the start of which is celebrated in a couple of weeks at Pentecost. Jesus tells His disciples to "love one another". Now clearly he wasn't telling them to fall in love with each other. He meant something rather different to what we normally mean in our world by the term "love".

Yesterday morning whilst I practiced my, rather minimal, French skills to book a hotel room at Le Mont St Michel in Brittany (with some success) Ian took the dog for a nice long walk. They came back and I, flushed with success, went down to tell Ian of the lovely hotel which had a room with a view of the bay of Mont St Michel, a private terrace and a warm welcome to dogs. I was surprised to find Ian in the garden, with dog, bucket of water and shampoo all at hand. The dog was looking less than pleased at Ian' demonstration of love to him. For Beech had finished off his early morning walk with that supreme example of fun for dogs - and rolled in some lovely, smelly fox poo. It is like Chanel No 5 for mutts! Ian's love of the dog meant that he had to wash him to get ride of this organic perfume. It wasn't a pleasant task but it had to be done. It was loving; not that the dog necessarily thought so or understood it as such!

In our reading today we see that Jesus did something similar. He knelt and washed the dirty feet of His disciples - probably at the start of the Passover meal. In the ancient world people wore sandals so feet became dirty. In the heat and dust of the Middle East I think feet would have become very dirty indeed. To wash someone's fee is and was an intensely personal thing to do and also a deeply servile thing. The lowest servants would have been given that job, yet Jesus, the Lord and Leader of them, kneels to do this himself. He literally rolls up his sleeves and gets his hands dirty. He then goes on to tell them to love each other. Clearly the two things - practical service and love are linked.

Yet his is not all he does in our reading today. There is rather a sharp exchange between Him and Judas. Jesus clearly knows what Judas is up to and rather indirectly challenges him. I don't know if he hoped to dissuade him, but he told Judas the truth. He didn't skirt around the issue or pretend that he didn't know this inconvenient truth but made sure that Judas knew that he knew.

Love then, from this passage, seems to be about two things. Direct truthfulness and practical service of others. We know this as these things are the backdrop to Jesus' command to the disciples to love on another.

What does love one another mean?

So from this passage we can start to have more of an idea of the type of love that we ought to have for one another as Jesus' present day disciples. There are four things I think we can understand for our own communal life from this passage.

Jesus doesn't command us to like each other but to love one another. Throughout the Gospels we see tensions between the disciples; James and John whose mother wants them to be the leaders, the disputes amongst them about who was the greatest, the insinuations in the Gospels that Judas was a thief all lead us to realise that they didn't always get on with each other. This is no great surprise - we don't always get on with each other either! After Pentecost as the Early Church grew there was the huge falling out between Peter and Paul; they didn't like each other much either. However, we are not called to like each other but to love one another.

This goes back to the idea that love isn't - as our culture thinks it is - primarily a feeling but an act of the will. We don't have much control over who we like or who we fall in love with, but we do control who we love. We find ourselves here every Sunday with around 40 people a week. There are around 60 people a month who worship here at least once. We will love each other but we will never be able to like every single other person who comes along. We are responsible for treating each other well with courtesy and respect, but as humans we will always find we like some people more than others; that's not a problem. We are, however, called to love each other.

This love involves us getting involved in practical help for one another. This is modelled by Jesus in his washing the disciples feet. I am always humbled at the ways in which we do look out for each other here. People donating furniture when people move, money when people are in need, help with a myriad of practical skills, listening ears when people are down. All of these things involve us becoming more loving as a community, more healing and more like the church that God calls us to be. We help each other in practical ways - this is what love is about.

But our love is more than this. We don't just help each other. We seek to help, in practical way, those we don't know. We do this by raising funds for the Immigration Aid Centre - over £500 so far the most we have ever raised through the Smartie collection - by writing letters to oppressive governments or sending greetings cards to political prisoners. When we buy a copy of the Big Issue, or give to any form of charity we help those we don't know and so, give a practical expression of the love that we have as Christians.

And then there is the final facet of love; the difficult one that Jesus models. Telling the truth. This can be hard because, particularly for those of us who are English we are so used to being nice! Spend some time with the Germans to see a very different way of building community; they can be very direct, brutal almost, but this is as much part of their culture as avoiding anything unpleasant is to the English! Sometimes we just need to tell it as it is; this doesn't mean being nasty, but sometimes it means being direct. I find this as a pastor, that sometimes I have to be very direct in order to be loving. Sometimes we have to say that this behaviour damages our life together, or that behaviour is damaging you personally, or this behaviour is not acceptable. This telling the truth is never easy and never intended to hurt or belittle but to build up and show love. If a child plays with matches and you tell the child off you are being loving - though the child might not think so! Ian was being loving to Beech when washing off that organic smelly stuff, but Beech was less than impressed!

End Result - A Community of Love

The end result of learning to love even those we don't like, of getting involved in practical works of service for each other and those we don't yet know and of speaking the truth in a loving way is that we will continue to grow into a powerful community of love which helps change and save lives. Our culture is crying out for love - it thinks it is crying out for sex, romance, alcohol and drugs - but what it yearns for is authentic love. That is what Jesus both gives us and commands us to offer. Love will change our world.

Amen.

This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.