I’m in the middle of one of those weekends. You know, the weekends where you say “Wow, I hope I never have another one of those anytime soon!” But then you do, more regularly than you’d like to admit. Seems like life kinda goes that way these days.
So, on Thursday La Donna and I took Maddie to her college for move-in day. It was less emotional than I feared, but the absence is beginning to get to me, I must confess. On Friday I went with my older brother and sister to tell dad that we were going to have sell his house in Paris in order to keep them where they are in Warren. It was a difficult conversation to say the least. Saturday I am driving my son Rhys for his second year of college. And the echoes in the hallways will be noticeable. Sunday I meet with the whole congregation at Aldersgate and attempt to share with them (or at least those who are interested enough to stay and listen) where I am convinced God is calling us to go as a community of faith and worship - and then hope and pray they want to get on board this gospel train. Then that evening I put my sister on a plane to fly back to California.
It will be like shouting into the Grand Canyon. Well, sort of. Not really. La Donna is here, as are the upstairs cats and the crazy dogs. The house will still be full and active and loud. Sometimes excruciatingly loud. Just come ring the doorbell and see what I mean. Or hear it. But still... We talked about taking a leaf out of the table so it won’t seem as empty. Adjustments can be made, lots of folks have made them. We’ll be fine, I know that. After all this is how it is supposed to be.
This is what we worked for, getting the kids ready for the next stage, helping family make transitions into a new reality, moving with a community into a future that can be as dynamic, as rich as our past has been. There is excitement about the new, there is hope and there is joy. We left Maddie there at Wittenberg and she was already talking about what was coming next. About the friends she had already met. About the classes that she was looking forward to. How could I begrudge her any of that? I can’t, I don’t. Not in the least.
So, then why is it so hard? Why is change, why is growth, why is something new - exciting and wonderful as it may be - why is it so hard?
John 15:12-17 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 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. 16 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. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
Ah, so that’s how we deal with all of this, with more love. Well, yes, of course. But it isn’t all that simple. Look closer. Look deeper.
First of all we have to completely redefine this love thing, or else a sentence like “this is my commandment, that you love one another” just won’t make a lick of sense. How do you command an emotion? How to switch on a response to another human being? Love just happens, right? We fall in love, we get hit upside the head by love, we are made helpless by love, right? I’ve seen the movies, I’ve read the books, that’s how it happens.
Unless you happen to be talking to Jesus. This is my commandment. Commandment. He clearly has a different understanding of love than the one we tend to operate out of. He seems to imply that love is a choice that we make, an act of will. We decide to love, or to be loving. We decide to bear fruit, fruit that will last.
Wait. What? Bear fruit? Jesus uses this image a lot in the Gospel of John. It is the measure by which we show our relation to him. It is determining factor in whether we belong or not. It is the output of our connection, our salvation that comes from him. Jesus, again, is never very interested in the warm feelings in our hearts as much as he is in what we are doing with our hands and our feet, or what is coming out of our mouths. And he wants us to understand that these things we do, these words we share are not just ways of passing the time, this isn’t just busy work we need to engage in until it comes time to be gathered up into the kingdom. No, these things we do make a difference in the lives of those around us. That is the fruit that will last. It lasts not because folks will remember you and what you did, but because a life was changed, a new story was written, a new trail blazed.
This is the kind of work we are to involve ourselves in, this is the kind of love we are commanded to love. Love like his. This is the kind of fruit we produce, fruit that lasts because it makes a difference in people’s lives. This is the mission we have been given by the one who called us, even before we knew we were called. “You did not choose me, I chose you.” He was at work in us before we ever turned and acknowledged that presence, that passion, that hope.
And then, though I hesitate to say it, when we embrace that call and live into the mission of loving, of bearing fruit, God will bless us in our doing, will give us what our hearts desire. I hesitate, not because I don’t believe it, but because so often hear it wrong. “God will give you whatever you ask.” Lord, Almighty, how we twist those words to justify all sorts of bad theology. Prosperity gospel, name it and claim it, seed faith, all these and more are the misinterpretations of what Jesus is trying to tell us here. He is saying when we desire God with all our heart, God will fill us. When we desire to love like Christ calls us to love, then the Spirit will equip us with the capacity to love. When we want nothing more than to be Christ’s friends, which means to see the kingdom as he sees it and to work with all our soul to make it real in our communities, then God will grant us the vision to see it.
But still, even when we see what is best, even when we move out in faith, even when we want to change and grow and be more like Christ and our community more like the kingdom, even then, we hurt. Even then, it is hard. Why is that?
Because something has to die. Because we have to die - to self, to sin, to preference, to the good life as the world defines it. Lay down your life. It seems beyond us. Lay it down. It is asking too much, don’t you think? Lay it down. So, what, we are supposed to go out and die? Supposed to find risky situations and throw ourselves into the fray with a thought for our own safety? Lay it down. Well, maybe, but probably not. We are not called to be daredevils for Jesus. Yet we are asked to lay it down.
The preacher and teacher of preachers Fred Craddock once talked about this idea, this laying down your life idea. He said, yeah, there might come a time when we have to put our whole life on the line, to lay it all down. But that isn’t how most of us live out our faith. See it like being asked to empty our bank accounts and trust funds and IRAs. He said maybe you would have to plunk down the whole amount in a sacrificial move, Jesus asked for that from time to time. But for most of us it is not putting down the whole amount in one grand act. It is putting down a quarter here, a dollar there. We spend our lives, we lay down our lives, by surrendering this thing, or that thought, we let go of this comfort or that pleasure. We lay down this routine, or that preference so that we might be seen as more open, more accommodating. We let go of good things in order to grab hold of great ones.
I say goodbye to my sweetpea, so that along with the whole world I can say hello to the young woman who just might change the world for the better. Lay it down.
Shalom,
Derek
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