blip : Being Lonely In Paradise :

Title: Eternal friendships
Texts: John 13:31-38; Revelation 21:1-6.
Date: 5.6.2007

Yesterday we were driving from Nick and Jen’s old house to their new house, helping them move their stuff. And as we were driving on those rural roads, we passed by a church. The church had one of those signs out front—usually churches put out a clever line, something memorable, most of the time pretty cheesy, in my humble opinion. But this one wasn’t clever, nor was it cheesy. But it struck me because I was trying to think through this sermon.

The sign said: “Stay focused outward.” I take it that the people of this secluded, rural church are trying to remind themselves that it’s important to pay attention to what’s going on in the outside world, not just what’s happening in their church lives. Christianity is about serving the world, pouring our lives out for the world, showing the world the love of Jesus Christ.

Two things happened to me when I saw that sign: First, I thought to myself, Oh, that’s good. And I remembered that usually the stuff on those signs are silly—and it’s nice that this one isn’t. Then, I thought, it’s strange that the Gospel of John isn’t so much interested in the church turning outward, about loving or caring about those outside the church?

Ernst Kasemann, a German pastor and NT scholar who resisted the Nazis, had this to say about the Gospel of John:

The concept of love in the Fourth Gospel is not without its problems… John demands love for one’s brethren, but not for one’s enemies… There is no indication in John that love for one’s brother would also include love toward one’s neighbour, as demanded in the other books of the New Testament.

So, we read our passage for this evening from the Gospel of John about love. 13:34—“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

It’s all about the love of the community for those in the community. It’s the complete opposite message from the one on that sign I saw: the Jesus of John’s Gospel says, “Stay inward focused.” Love one another. The neighbor and the enemy are forgotten.

Strange… and harsh, isn’t it? I think it is. It cuts against all our progressive, Christian sensibilities—a sharp double-edged sword. And I don’t think it’s right to dull that sword, to soften the text. It hits hard, and somehow that’s good news.

But how is it good news?

In John 13:33 Jesus informs his followers of some bad news: the party is over, he has to leave—“I will be with you only a little longer,” he says. But how do we go one without his presence. Well, the answer Jesus gives is the new commandment: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

In his absence, Jesus’ presence continues in and through our love for one another. And the way we come together in a community of love, a love in the form of Jesus Christ, is our witness; it is the way we re-present an absent Jesus.

(pause)

There’s a lot of talk these days, in Christian circles, about how we need to be, what’s called, a ‘missional’ church. There’s plenty of books out there with titles like The Missional Leader, or The Ministry of the Missional Church, or A Missional Future. The list can go on.

And it’s not like the Mennonite church in North America has resisted the missional craze. There’s a link on the Mennonite Church USA homepage called, “Pathways to a Missional Future.”

I don’t have anything against missions—I think it’s a good idea. It’s more than a good idea, it’s what we are called to do—we share our faith, we proclaim the good news.

But this is my concern with all this talk about being a “missional” whatever. My sense is that it’s a result of a deep anxiety, an anxiety about the death of the church. The mainline denominations in the United States are losing members fast. The average age of the Mennonite Church in the United States is ever increasing—there aren’t a whole lot of younger folks going to church anymore.

There’s this sense that the church in the United States may in fact die out. It just can’t compete with all the other interesting things our culture offers. So, just like General Motors needs to hire better consultants to figure out how to survive in a market where Toyota dominates, all the different churches in our country need to find that edge, that hip new look, to capture the attention of the ever-diversified market. So, the people in leadership and the people who write books have come up with a solution, and the solution has a slogan—the missional church.

Here’s my concern: somehow someone has made a distinction between on the one side: the way church is a gathering, something we do when we come together; and the other side: the work of the church to reach out into the world. That’s an arbitrary line. There shouldn’t be a distinction.

The command of Jesus in John in singularly focused: love one another as I have loved you. I think the question for the church today, the question I want to pose to our church, is this: can our worshipping fellowship be a place where we love one another? Is this a place where we can develop deep friendships of love? Is this a place where we will let go of our lives, as Jesus let go of his, and allow our individual selves get tangled up together? So much so, that separation from this body is separation from something that has become part of us.

And according to Revelation 21, this knot of individual lives is the site of God’s presence. That’s what the vision says in verse 3:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the dwelling of God is among humans. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.

In the old Jerusalem, God’s presence was in the temple. But in this new city, the dwelling of God is among the people—it’s with the people. God’s presence passes through human bodies.

And church is the place where we begin to experience this presence that we will enjoy for eternity. In our gatherings, when we come together, we experience a foretaste of God’s eternal life whose dwelling is among the people. Church is where we begin our eternal friendship with God, which is our friendship with one another.

Everything else that makes our civilization the way it is will pass away. The vision of hope in Revelation 21 shows us that, as it says in verse 4, “this old order of things has passed away.” All those ways we order our lives, and all those things that direct our lives—they will all pass away. Governments, presidents, capitalism, prime ministers, empires—they don’t last; here today gone tomorrow.

What lasts? Our holy friendships; the love we have for one another. And as everyone knows, love is also work, it’s a task; it’s a calling; it’s a commitment. But it’s a task whose substance is the very nature of God; for, as John says elsewhere, God is love… God is in our love… Our love is possible because God first loved us. We show one another grace as a reflection of the grace God has shown us.

It may not look like it, but our church takes place at the intersection of heaven and earth. And God has come down to us; God has begun something new in our midst; the holy city comes down from heaven into our midst. It’s not something we achieve; God’s presence is something we receive as we receive the gifts of one another. And love is the name we have for that reception and entanglement that lasts forever.

And at this point I must offer, in much fear and trembling, a humble difference with the way Ernst Kasemann characterizes the way love works in the Gospel of John. Our love for one another can’t exclude the rest of the world because we remember that central passage from early in the Gospel—it’s that passage we all had to memorize at the beginning of our Christian journey. John 3:16—“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…”

God pours out his love into our midst in Jesus Christ, because God loves the whole world. We exist as the community of Christ’s love as a sign, a reminder, of the way God wants to love all people for all ages—what God begins in our midst will continue for eternity.

And we offer to the world what we receive from God: our love for one another, which is Christ’s presence. The mission of the church is to love one another, and by cultivating these eternal friendships of God’s love, we have something to offer to the world; our love is always an invitation into the presence of God. Friendship is our gift to the world—we give from the overflow of God’s love for us.

(pause)

Yesterday, in the midst of loading up Nick and Jen’s stuff in the U-Haul, I told Matt I was having a hard time coming up with a good story to use as a hook for my sermon. He asked me what the passages were. I told him about this passage from John, the part about Jesus’ new commandment to love one another. And he just looked at me, and said, “What are you talking about? This is it right here! We are doing it.”

I think that’s exactly right. How do we love one another? There are millions of ways. And I saw one way yesterday—it’s something so ordinary, like helping each other move our stuff on your day off from work. It’s sitting at a meal, a gift from Jen and Nick, and enjoying each other’s presence—for, as Revelation tells us, the dwelling of God will be among people. And that’s why we come together again to worship—to share our lives and receive God’s presence.

My hope and my prayer is that, no matter how we decide be church, that we may make our love for one another a priority. If we don’t have that, then we have no good news to share with others.

This was the case from the beginning of Christianity. Tertullian, a North African writing in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, tells us that people were struck by the love of the Christian community. He says,

It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. ‘See,’ they say, ‘how they love one another…how they are ready even to die for one another.’ (Apol. 39.7)

See how they love one another… That’s our calling. That’s what it means to be the body of Christ. That we love one another as Christ first loved us.