John 15:9-17
As I Have Loved
You
James Sledge May
9, 2021
Like so many others, Vilma and her two boys, John and Misa, were paraded in front of the notorious SS doctor Josef Mengele as he decided who would be gassed. John, the older son, had a congenital condition that left him with a pronounced limp, and so he was put in the group marked for death.
Vilma could not bear to see her son taken to the gas chambers alone, and so added herself to his group. The evening before they were taken to the gas chambers, she managed to write a short note. She gave it to a sympathetic guard and asked him to deliver it to her husband. Amazingly, he did so. This is the note.
Into eternity, Vilma.[1]
This short letter displays both the human capacity for the vilest of evils along with the most remarkable, self-giving love. The horrors of Auschwitz are almost beyond comprehension and a warning of what can happen whenever the other is demonized. But I think I can comprehend the love of a mother that could not let her child die alone.
In our gospel reading this morning, the writer hammers on a favorite topic in John, loving one another. Abide in Jesus’ love, it says, and twice more, “love one another.” But there is something just a bit odd about this, although it’s not anything you can see or hear in English.
That’s because there are several different words in the original language of the New Testament that all get translated as “love.” One sort of love is the love for a good friend. This philia (fili/a) type love shows up in the word Philadelphia, referring to brotherly or sisterly love, but philia is most associated with good friends. In fact, when it says “friend” in our scripture this morning, a literal translation would be “the beloved,” the philia sort of love.
Given that Jesus speaks so much of friendship in these verses, we might expect that this would be the sort of love he commands his disciples to have, but he does not. Instead, he speaks of agape (a)ga/ph) love. For the gospel writer, this refers to Christ-like, sacrificial love, a love that would give itself totally for the other.
Our scripture passage has the famous line, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” When I’ve heard this line in the past, I’ve assumed this was Jesus talking about laying down his own life, but now I’m not so sure. No doubt this references Jesus’ death, but it also defines “love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus expects the love among his followers to be as radical and self-sacrificing as his love for them.
When Jesus first introduces the new commandment that his followers love one another just as Jesus has loved them, he also says this. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” This radical, Christ-like love is to be so clear and obvious that those who are not part of the faith community nonetheless see it and identify Christians as those who love one another.
I wonder how often non-Christians look at a church building and say, “Those people are a little crazy. They would do absolutely anything for one another, even die for each other.” Do people look at us and think we are some sort of radical community where everyone looks out for everyone else? Or do they look at us and assume we are pretty much just like everyone else in the world other than a few curious beliefs?
____________________________________________________________
When the pandemic hit last spring, it caused a huge change in this congregation’s Welcome Table ministry. For the few who may not know, Welcome Table is a free meal served on the first and third Wednesday of every month. In addition, one of those meals included a $10.00 grocery store gift card for each adult. But Covid made it impossible to serve a meal inside, and so the planning team that oversees the ministry decided to hand out a small bag with toiletries, snacks, and the grocery gift card on both Wednesdays of the month.
Once we figured out how to navigate the stay-at-home orders, a small group of volunteers began to prepare a meal that was boxed up and handed out with the gift card. The need was great and the number of folks coming to pick up a meal mushroomed. We quickly went from handing out a few hundred gift cards a month to distributing more than twelve hundred. That’s $12,000.00 a month for gift cards alone, much, much more than budgeted.
That large a cost seemed unsustainable, and the planning team began to discuss cutting back. But first, we let the congregation know about the situation. I’m not sure anyone was prepared for what happened. We received $100,000.00 in donations to Welcome Table. (That’s more than ten percent of our annual budget.) Some people had little trouble making a significant contribution, but others gave money they would otherwise have spent on other things. They decided that these members of our community needed the money more than they did. They embodied loving one another.
I have felt immense pride in our congregation for how they responded and continue to respond to this need, and I love to talk about it. And I can’t help wondering what it might look like for this sort of behavior to mark all activities and interactions at FCPC. What would it be like if we abided so deeply in Jesus’ love, if it so suffused our very being as individuals and as a congregation, that we viewed every person who is hurting, anyone in need, any pain or injustice as a chance to share Christ’s love?
[1] Will Higgins, “'Into eternity': She did not survive the Holocaust, but her words did,” IndyStar.com, April 28, 2018
No comments:
Post a Comment