Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on April 24, 2016
Scripture texts: Acts 11:1-18, John 13:31-35

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.

There’s a part of me that wants to chuckle at Jesus’ words, because this isn’t really a new commandment, just perhaps a different way of thinking about things. If you peruse the Torah and read the commandments God handed down to his Chosen in days of old, you see a lot of stuff that looks a lot like love.

Take care of the poor. Reach out to widows and orphans. Treat the stranger in your midst with respect and dignity. Honor one another. Be honest in your dealings. Sure, you’ll get these one-off rules like “don’t eat shellfish or pork” or “stone any child that talks back to you,” which we thankfully and blissfully ignore in these modern times, but outside of those oddities the overall tone of God’s commandments is “love and take care of each other.”

And that’s reinforced when we move into the stories of the prophets. What gets God angry? Why does he send Isaiah or Ezekiel or Nahum or any of these other guys to speak his word? Trust me, it isn’t because not enough bratty kids are being stoned. It’s because the poor are going hungry, widows and orphans are neglected, strangers and foreigners are mistreated, and things like that. Page after page of the prophetic writings reveals God’s heart and passion. What ticks him off? When people do not love and take care of one another.

Jesus’ new commandment isn’t really anything new. But he says it anyway because we are just so bad at doing it.

Case in point is our Acts text for today. Peter is giving his summary, really a defense of his actions, regarding his visit to the Roman centurion Cornelius. Because the initial response to the news of what Peter had done was clearly, “How dare Peter go visit one of THOSE PEOPLE, those dirty Romans, those Gentiles, those not-one-of-us people.”

At first, even Peter didn’t buy into the idea that these Romans were worth his time. God had to send him this elaborate vision to convince him to go. But even after he’s gone and come back, he has to answer to his peers for what he’s done.

It stands to reason that these good Jewish Christians in Jerusalem were very familiar with what we now call the Old Testament. It was their Bible and their devotion and faith are not really in question here. Surely they read all those hundreds of verses about caring for one another, and particularly among them the ones about caring for the stranger. Why then is it such a surprise what Peter has done? If God wants them to honor and dignify the stranger, is that not what Peter did? And then to discover that God has blessed these Gentiles with faith and the Holy Spirit, what a sign that must have been (or should have been.) After all, was it not God’s intent to pour out his spirit upon ALL flesh? Peter himself preached that very passage on Pentecost from Joel. None of this should be a shock to anyone, and yet it is. To all of them.

We humans have a certain selfishness when it comes to God. We tend to think that the God we worship is just like us. Same skin color, same economic status, same personal philosophy, same nationality, same race, same everything, just bigger and better. There’s a reason pictures of Jesus always show us some white guy, and this is it. I’m not sure we’d be all that comfortable with some dark skinned Middle-Eastern Jew who looks a little too much like Osama Bin Laden for our tastes, but maybe we should get comfortable with it. God is not us and we might need a reminder of that from time to time.

God is greater than even our wildest imaginings. And part and parcel of that greatness is that he is far more broad minded and accepting than us. His plan all along was to bring blessing to the whole world through the mechanism of his Chosen: first the Hebrews, and then later, grafted on, the Church. And the blessing he intends to give is love and nurture and care.

God takes care of us so that we can take care of the world. It seems so simple when boiled down to that elementary truth. But in practice, it’s a lot harder to pull off. Let’s be brutally honest. We like hating people who are different from us. We like tearing them down. It makes us feel good in a sick and twisted way. It makes us feel superior. It makes us feel better about ourselves. But it is not Christian. It is not what God desires for his people or this world.

What he wants is love, compassion, care, and mercy. He wants us to give of ourselves for the sake of others, so confident in God’s care of us that we need not fear anything. Which is precisely what he does.

Jesus gives this “new” commandment on Maundy Thursday. In fact, it’s the origin of that word “Maundy,” which comes from the Latin mandatum or “mandate” (i.e. commandment). That timing is important, since we know what Jesus then does after he speaks these words. He is taken into custody, tortured, put on trial, and then nailed to a cross for the sake of the world. For the sake of everyone.

He gives of himself for the sake of others, so confident in God’s care that he has no fear, not even of death. He models the Christian life of love in his own self, setting a standard that we may never reach, but may we always strive towards.

But remember also that Jesus did that not just for you, me, and people like us. He did that for everyone. It was the ultimate expression of that blessing God meant for the whole world and all of its people. Black, white, or whatever race. Christian or other religion or no religion. American or foreigner. Rich or poor. Male or female. Gay or straight or anything else. All means all.

Love is the fulfillment of the law, St. Paul would write in Romans. Love one another is the ultimate expression of what God desires for his people. It’s what he did for us. It’s what he calls us to do for each other. Amen.