The Sixth Sunday of Easter
Year B
May 10, 2015
The Reverend Amelie Wilmer Minor
Jesus said to his disciples, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 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. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in
you, and that your joy may be complete.
"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater
love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I
command you. 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. 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. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another." (John 15:9-17)
-------------------------------------Several weeks ago, some time around the middle of April, Westboro Baptist Church picketed my
seminary, Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. My friend Herbert Jones, who told me
about it, took a sort of stiff-necked pride in this. Like me, he doesn’t much like Westboro Baptist
Church; their message and their methods offend him. They picket institutions and events with
signs that say that God hates certain groups of people that, in fact, God loves. So when they
announced that they were going to picket my seminary, we he thought, “Well good…we want to
be a part of those things that this group dislikes.”1
Now the fact that any of us finds something offensive is not such a big deal; if you’re like me,
you run into a whole host of irritating things out there – people who text at stop lights, neighbors
who like to mow their lawns at 6:00 in the morning… Lots of little things offend me; Junk food
offends me!
But Westboro Baptist Church is different. They have protested at the Holocaust Museum in
Washington D.C. with signs that say “God Hates Jews”. That offends me at an entirely different
level, a visceral level. I have a deep, instinctive aversion for these people. I actively dislike
them.
(Do you see the irony yet?)
In today’s reading from the Gospel of John we are told unambiguously to love one another as
God has loved us. There are no qualifications to this statement. Love, and the way God loves,
what that love means, has pretty much been the theme of our readings over these past few weeks.
God loves like a good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep, a vine grower, who tends
1
I am indebted to the Reverend Herbert Jones for this story, and several other of the ideas in this sermon.
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and prunes its vine so it will bear abundant fruit. This is agape love, self-giving love, loving
someone or something, not for our own benefit, but for theirs. We also hear, in today’s lesson
from 1st John what it means to love God in return, that whoever loves the parent, God, loves
God’s children…all of them, not just the ones we like!
What we do not hear is that God is power or order or judgment or being right. We, of course,
may yearn for this; in our challenging and ambiguous world we may desire more than anything a
God who gives us clear-cut law and judgement that holds everyone accountable, a God who
controls nature and prevents violence and protects us from all harm, a God who gives us an “unoffensive” world in which to live.
But we are not given this. We are given love, a love that becomes us as we let go of the pettiness
and judgementalism that often drives us. It is a love that through Jesus’ life, death and
resurrection becomes a part of who we are at the very core of our beings, ingrained in our own
humanity; “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you,” Jesus says, “abide in my love so
that your joy may be complete.” And we are given our response to this love. "This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
It was while reflecting upon these words that the images of the Westboro picketers came to me,
with their sad and ugly signs. I began to ask myself what is my response to this? How am I
convicted by today’s gospel in my disgust for these so-called protesters? I conjured up the
images in my head of those signs and those angry faces. I remember hearing about the protests
and that my initial response, my gut reaction, my fight or flight response was to shut them down
and shame them. They needed to be out-shouted and humiliated.
I’m sure you’ve all heard the expression “trust your gut”. Well, perhaps not always. Often for me
my reactive tendency in certain situations is not the best response. I have learned through
experience to give those things that stir up an immediate emotional reaction some time to simmer
down before I respond. I’m not 100% there yet, but it has proved a healthier way for me to live.
What actually happened with those picketers at VTS was that nobody paid any attention to them
and they left earlier than they had planned. This gave me, and still gives me, a kind of smug
sense of satisfaction. Ignoring them is even better than shouting them down; it provides for them
an apparent dosage of shame that fits in nicely with my own sense of justice.
But I kept thinking, and praying. Isn’t there an even better response? Is there a response to the
picketers which would have shown them our willingness to celebrate their inherent value and
worth, even if their behavior might diminish it? There is of course. Someone from the seminary
might have taken them some bottled water and a few granola bars, or even better, given them
meal tickets and invited them into the refectory, or even better, offered to share a real meal with
them by inviting them to the Lord’s table, at their noonday eucharist.
To be perfectly honest with you, I am not sure I could have been the one to extend that
invitation. But I might have been…it’s possible. I hope I am evolving to a point where that
would be possible for me. We are, after all, called to love all God’s children, even if we
ourselves cannot imagine laying down our life for them.
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What is important, I think, is that we do acknowledge the inherent worth of those whom we find
offensive or who disturb our complacency. As William Sloane Coffin once said, “God’s love
does not seek value, it creates it. It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because
we are loved we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement.” 2
Which makes me wonder if a part of our call to love one another as God loves us is a call to first
accept this profound and freely given gift for ourselves. In loving us, God gives us worth and
frees us from the need to be right or better in order to prove our value.
When we humbly accept the love God has for us and also for our brothers and sisters, we free
ourselves of the self-inflicted punishment of shame, which I believe lies at the heart of our need
to be right. We can then take the risk to simply be ourselves, bearing the kind fruit that cannot be
diminished or degraded by the opinions of others, which is the fruit that lasts.
When I was on retreat last month, I picked up a fascinating book called Being Wrong:
Adventures in the Margin of Error. In it, the author, Kathryn Schulz, probes into our culture’s
aversion to error…and how our shame and embarrassment and resistance to making mistakes
paralyzes us, and stifles creativity.
Not only that, but, and I quote, "our default attitude toward wrongness - our distaste for error and
our appetite for being right - tends to be rough on relationships. This applies equally to
relationships among nations, communities, colleagues, friends, and (this will not be lost on most
of us) relatives. Indeed an old adage of therapists is that you can either be right or be in a
relationship: you can remain attached to Team You winning every confrontation, or you can
remain attached to your friends and your family, but good luck trying to do both."3
In loving us, God invites us into relationship, not only with God, but with one another. And
then, week after week, God invites us to a table, to share a meal, where we can embody and
embrace our own and our brothers’ and sisters’ inherent value. As our Eucharistic prayer says, it
is in the love expressed through the incarnation, that God has made us worthy to stand before
God, without shame,[ but in love. ]
George Herbert, one of the defining figures in Anglican thought, wrote a poem in the 17th
century about the meal we are about to share, which is very appropriately called “Love.” I invite
you to listen to this poem, and to hear God’s invitation to take your own place at his table.
LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
2
William Sloan Coffin, Credo (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 6
3
Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (HarperCollins ebooks, Kindle edition, 20110),
Chapter 1.
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If I lack'd anything.
'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'
'Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.4
4
George Herbert, “Love (III),” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/poem/173632
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