Easter 5, May 3 2015
Acts 9:26-31; 1 John 3:18-24; John 15:1-8
Brookdale

Today’s second reading addresses the question of what God wants us to do.  It says, “we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us.”  That sounds straightforward, but in fact we misunderstand the meaning if we take the words at their face value today.  So, what does it mean to believe in Jesus Christ, and what does it mean to love one another?

We might imagine that to believe in Jesus means to sign up as a Christian, or to believe the statements in the creed.  But “believing in” is not the same as “believing that.”  To believe in somebody is to have confidence in them.  How often have we said to somebody, “You can do it.  I believe in you.”  Similarly, we vote for candidates we believe in: we trust that they have the ability and character to do the job.  Alexander the Great was a terrific leader of men.  When he jumped over the wall into a city, the men of his army stormed over the wall to follow him, because they believed in him.

People follow Jesus because they believe in him.  There is a picture on the Internet of Jesus sitting on a park bench with a young man.  Jesus says, “No, I’m not talking about Twitter.  I want you to literally follow me.”  Of course, he doesn’t really mean literally, like Alexander’s men followed him over the wall.  But he does want us to do what he did and taught. What Jesus taught or commanded was the same as what he did.  As Gandhi put it, Jesus was the change he wanted to see in the world. He healed; he forgave sins; he brought outcasts back into the community; he brought good news to the poor.  Or as St. Francis put it, where there was hatred, he sowed love; where there was doubt, faith; where there was despair, hope.  He did all this because he cared about people.

That’s the second part of what God wants us to do: “love one another just as he commanded us.”  And that brings us to a second word our modern culture has trouble with: love.  Today we tend to think of love as an emotion or a feeling.  But when this letter was written, not too long after the year 100, nobody cared about your emotions.  Love was understood as a bond between people that affected what they say and do, regardless of how they feel.

The Greeks had more words for love than we do.  We use the same word for loving our baby to loving God to loving ice cream.  The Greeks could distinguish between love in a family, passionate love, and friendship.  John almost always uses the Greek word agape for love; the word agape emphasizes selfless, even self-sacrificing love.  Agape is used for God’s love for us and the love we are to have for each other.

John points out in the beginning of our second reading that what you do is a lot more important than what you say.  In his day agape often meant sharing your meager meal with a neighbor or traveler who had even less.  Today in this country we have plenty of food and so much stuff that people rent places to put it.  But people still need kindness and understanding.  They need our patience and our attention.

Is this just motherhood and apple pie?  Consider how easy it is to get it wrong—to follow our own agenda even as we think we are doing the right thing.  When George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, was a young seeker, he went to visit a famous preacher.  He and this man walked in the man’s garden, while the man explained things to him in a brilliant way.  Then at one point young Fox accidentally stepped in a flowerbed, and the great preacher blew up.  Outraged, he railed at Fox for trampling his garden.  Fox left in sadness; clearly the great man didn’t really understand the gospel or agape and could not help him.

So let’s love in deed and truth, honestly caring about our neighbor, being kind and patient.  My sister suggested that I conclude with a few examples of such behavior, but you know them already: be patient with the person who can’t stop coughing at mealtime; stop by to visit with the person who can’t leave her room.  I’ll just add one suggestion for when you visit my garden: watch where you step!