Have you ever had one of those days? I suspect that we’ve all have. On such days you have two choices: you can sit there and wallow in your misery, or I can get off your butt and do something. Left to my own devices, I probably would’ve sat there and wallowed that day. But there was a load of clothing that had to be taken over to a refugee shelter in the East End. And I was recruited to be the delivery man. That’s what happens when you’re low man on the ministry staff totem pole. Now, we’re not just talking about a load of clothing; we’re talking about a LOAD of clothing! So the custodian and I filled up the church van, and I got into the driver’s seat, and I was on my way.
In those days I was driving this tiny little Toyota Tercel. A friend of mine use to call it my toy; it was that small. But here I am trying to navigate this full-size van through the streets of Toronto. I felt like I was driving a TTC bus. I’d never driven anything that was even close to being that big. However, I managed to get over to Woodgreen United Church (where the shelter was located). Then I had to unload all of the clothing. Then I had to drive this monster back through town to St. Matthew’s. So by the time I’d done all that – loaded the van, got into the van, drove it to the shelter, unloaded the van, drove it back from the shelter, backed the van into its parking spot, which was like 2 centimetres wider than the van itself, got out of the van, went into the church, got myself a cup of coffee, sat down – by the time I’d done all that, I felt wonderful!
Sometimes you have to love your way into being. You have to reach out from that deep pit of emotional goo into which you’ve fallen and grab someone’s hand. Maybe that hand belongs to someone who’s in even deeper goo than you are. I mean, the pain that I was feeling that day was real enough. And over time I’ve dealt with some of the issues that contributed to that pain. Deep emotional and spiritual pain can’t just be ignored with a sigh and that oh so Canadian thought that I shouldn’t be feeling badly because someone’s worse off than I am. If you’re hurting, you’re hurting, and in the long term that needs to be addressed. But, sometimes in the short term, you just have to do something which will save you from sinking even deeper into the gummy goo of emotional and spiritual distress. Yeah, I was hurting emotionally, but on the other side of town there were some people who’d been tortured, who’d seen loved ones killed, who’d been forced to flee from the political tyranny in their homeland, who’d arrived in Canada with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. So it was like I reached up my hand from the pit that I was in, and they reached out their hands from the pit that they were in, and somehow we pulled each other out.
Sometimes you just have to love your way into the fullness of life, and into the joy which can be found in the midst of such life. Sometimes you have to love your way into the abundant life that God has promised us. It might be a day when you don’t feel like loving anyone. It’s especially then that we are commanded to love. “This is my commandment,” Jesus said, “that you love one another” (John 15:12). The folks at the refugee shelter needed those clothes. It was as if God was commanding me to love those folks by bringing the clothes to them. “Get out of your stupor and love those folks,” God was saying. “And that’s an order!”
We are commanded to love. That’s the first thing that I want you to remember this morning. If you’re a practicing Christian, love isn’t an option. It’s a commandment. The Bible gives us 10 commandments, but if you have trouble with all 10, focus on what Jesus called the two great ones: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself” (see Mark 12:30-31). We are commanded to love.
Now in John’s gospel, when does Jesus pronounce this commandment? It’s a well known day in a well-known week when Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Anyone know what it is? Maundy Thursday. This whole section of John’s gospel, chapters 13 – 17, takes place on Maundy Thursday: the night when Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples, the night when Jesus was arrested, the night before Good Friday: when Jesus was killed. The word “Maundy” comes from the Latin word “mandatum,” which translates into English as “commandment.” Maundy Thursday is Commandment Thursday. It’s the day when Jesus commanded his disciples to love one another. Love isn’t some volunteer activity that we only have to do when we feel like it. No, first of all we are commanded to love.
Secondly, we do hard work when we love, but that work need not be a burden. Yes, it was initially hard work to take all those clothes to the refugee shelter, but by the end of the day that act of love had relieved my burden. Over time, the net effect of doing the work of love is that it’s not a burden, it’s a delight.
Maybe this is what John means when he says in his first letter, “And God’s commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). When I read this verse last week I thought, “Yeah, right! Listen, God, let me tell you about the burdens that I bear on your behalf!
There are times when those who love feel tremendous burdens. Because sometimes love is hard work. On one day, love might mean helping someone to move. That’s hard physical work. On another day, love might mean walking with someone through a painful and difficult time. That’s hard emotional work. Some other day, love might mean having to sit down with a family member or a brother or sister in Christ, to work through a problem that’s driven you apart. That’s hard work too. There are burdens which must be born when you love. But compared to the burdens of those who don’t know love, who are so caught-up in themselves that they seem unable to either give love or receive love, compared to those who bear that kind of burden, then living out the commandment that we love one another is a small burden. Yes, there are burdensome moments, but over the long haul we are relieved of burdens when we open our hearts to others, and when we do hard work on behalf of others. There are studies which indicate that those who are part of a circle of friends, or those who are part of a caring community such as the church, tend to live longer. Caring for people, and being cared for by people, reduces our stress and increases our chances of recovering from life-threatening illnesses. Love relieves our burdens.
It’s kind of like the old camp song:
Love is something if you give it away,
give it away, give it away.
Love is something if you give it away,
you end up having more.
It’s just like a magic penny.
Hold on tight, you won’t have any.
Lend it spend it you’ll have so many,
they’ll roll all over the floor.
Yes, we do hard work when we love, but – as Jesus said – the burden is light (Matthew 11:30).
We are commanded to love, we do hard but not burdensome work when we love, and we know God when we love. Jesus said, “Those who keep my commandments…are those who love me, and…I will love them and reveal myself to them” (John 14:21). We know God when we love. God is revealed to us through our acts of love. By loving another child of God, we can discern something of the nature of the One who loves us all.
In other words, you can love your way into faith. It is difficult to experience the presence and the flow of the Spirit within you and around you if you’re all wrapped-up in anxiety or fear or inordinate self-concern. It’s difficult to experience the presence and the power of God if you’re hording your material resources so as to look after only yourself and your family and the heck with everyone else. Sometimes it takes random and senseless acts of generosity to break out of that shell. There’s a bumper sticker which says something like, “Practice random acts of kindness and reckless acts of generosity.” Wise advice; because, in the new-found freedom of a generous heart, we can find the freedom of the Spirit. We know God when we love.
When I was serving up in York Presbytery, a number of United churches decided to collectively sponsor a refugee family. No congregation felt that they had the resources to do it alone, but all of us pooling our resources made the work much less burdensome. So we’d been working on this sponsorship for maybe a year, and we’d been told by the Ministry of Employment and Immigration that it would be many more months before the family arrived. Not long after we were told that, my phone rang on a Friday morning. On the other end of the line I heard the familiar voice of a man who’d been working especially hard on the refugee committee. And he said in his Scottish brogue, “Bruce, are ye sittin’ doown?”
Moving quickly to my chair, I said, “I am now.”
And Bill said, “The family is comin’ Tuesday.”
Well, you want to talk about love being hard work! We had to find an apartment, furnish it, stock it with food, organize a crew to meet the family at the airport, line up another crew to have the kettle on and goodies ready at the apartment, etc., etc. And much of the preliminary work had been done, but it’s still a lot of work translating tentative commitments into concrete action.
It was a tough five days. But I have to tell you, when that family came through the arrival doors at Pearson that Tuesday evening, I saw in their faces the face of God.
We are commanded to love. We do hard but somehow not burdensome work when we love. And we know God when we love. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” That’s what Jesus said. That’s what Jesus did. And he says to us, “Go, and do likewise.” Amen.
Text: John 15:12
Preached by Bruce D. Ervin
17 May 2009
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